Six decades after the age when most people do, I’ve become obsessed with Lego. My gateway drug was a set reminiscent of an ice cream truck. Like many parents, I was trying something new as a way to connect with one of my kids.
Unlike many parents, in my case the kid in question was an adult, and I was building a set that he had designed. My three boys were infatuated with building blocks as children, and my husband would play with them, teaching the concept of a “stable base.” But I was the one alone with the kids day after day, enduring interminable and soul-crushing afternoons on the floor of the playroom.
I remember when the boys were about 3, 7 and 8, feeling like it was an eternity until my husband would get home, and I was thinking: “Lego again ? Didn’t we just do this yesterday ?” Those hours seemed to go on forever, but one day, impossibly, I blinked, and they were suddenly driving, procuring fake IDs and heading off to college. Of the three, my middle child, Aaron, was the enigmatic one, the one I couldn’t always understand. We moved from Ohio to the Bay Area when Aaron was in fifth grade, and the transition was almost too much for him.
He’d always been change-averse; when I rearranged the furniture in our Ohio family room when Aaron was about 6, he was disconsolate, wailing for days like King Lear in the storm: “Why is everything different ?” The move to California caused him terrible angst; like a sad old turtle retreating into his shell, Aaron .
