I never thought Lego building blocks could make me cry. It happened as I was cleaning out my youngest son’s closet. Jamie, my last little baby, turned 13 this year and wants all evidence of his childhood out of his room.
He has spent his whole life dealing with his big brother’s hand-me-downs. Not just Jake’s clothes, but his toys, too. We always knew when Jake cleaned his room because Jamie would wind up with a pile of junk in the middle of his floor.
When admonished for it, Jake would answer, “Well, I thought he might want some of that stuff.”
“Yeah”, I heard Jamie call across the hall once. “I was just thinking the other day that I’d sure like some old soda cans! And a person can never have enough dirty socks!”
Usually, he took it in stride, though, because Jake would pass on some pretty good toys. While I was busy getting Jake to clean up the trash he dumped with the toys, Jamie would stack the treasures in his closet.
As Jake grew, he began to focus all of his attention on computers, skate boarding and girls. The piles of stuff appeared in Jamie’s room less and less often until finally, Jamie possessed every toy in the house.
Jamie’s at camp this week and I thought I’d do the kid a favor by packing everything up for our church’s garage sale. What a feeling of accomplishment to vacuum the rug in his pristine, empty closet! What a relief to load the boxes into our suburban.
But the only thing I can’t bring myself to pack up are the plastic storage boxes full of Legos. When the boys were little, they played with Legos every single day. Despite the eyesore, we kept their Lego storage bins in our living room so that the whole family could be together after dinner and homework.
Sometimes the boys would wind up behind a chair, secretly clicking Legos together in order to surprise us with their latest creation. Sometimes, the tiny blocks would be scattered across the coffee table as they struggled with the printed instructions.
One summer, the boys got all of their friends in the neighborhood involved in building a Lego town. Each boy created his own store and a product to sell. They spent that whole day bartering with each other, while I loomed nearby, proud of their cleverness.
Now my little boys are young men who are too cool for Legos. Too cool for me, too.
But when I look at those blocks, I still remember their excitement as they counted out the money from their pockets to pay for a brand new set of Legos. I can still see the light in their eyes as they spilled the colorful blocks out, sat on the floor and let the pictures in their heads take shape in their hands.
Those storage bins hold the key to a time in my life I’m not ready to let go of, when there were plenty of days ahead to spend with my little boys and plenty of blocks with which to build our perfect world.