Sweet Music of the Lego Bin.

With my number one child, some days are better than others. Let's just say that today was one of those others, with intense chat sessions on at least five separate occasions and lots of frustrated and bruised feelings all around. It's a cycle that can spiral precipitously downward and is hard to shake out of.

In fact, to shake out of it takes a concerted effort, so when the opportunity arose tonight, I did not pounce at first, but eventually I grabbed it with as much gusto as I could:

I was sitting on the floor next to Caroline to help her get to sleep. Just having a parent in the room can sometimes mean the difference between falling peacefully to sleep in five minutes and requiring repeated trips to the door to put her back in bed and remind her to lie still and quiet. I was getting into my book, when I heard a knock at the door. It was Ian wanting to know if I could help him build a Lego Astros Command Base, and instantly my blood began to rise because I've told him many times not to come in when I'm trying to get Caroline to sleep. (On some occasions this has cost another 30 minutes of settling.) Although no harm was done, I snapped and told him to wait in his room for me. When he, very quietly and tentatively came back in a couple of minutes, I realized that Caroline was long since asleep, and by this time I was just enjoying some quiet time reading my book. My choices were: be right (in my own mind) and put him off longer while reading some more, or get over it and go play Legos.

I don't even know why it's so hard to get down on the floor and play some times, but I know that for Ian, this is his love language, and there's no better way to fill him up than quality time on the floor, speaking his language.

My hesitance was actually a sad commentary on how stodgy I've gotten, because anyone who knew me as a kid knows I was way into Legos. One of the great satisfactions of fatherhood for me was introducing Ian to Legos through my own old sets that had been hiding away at my parents' house for years and years. It didn't take long for the indescribable sound of hands pushing through a drawer full of Lego bricks to brush away years of cobwebs from my youthful spirit. Before long, my inner eight year old was there side by side with my filial eight year old, snapping bricks together, constructing a control tower so that his Mars Mission ships could land safely under heavy Alien attack. Weapon systems galore! Radar towers, swiveling and tilting! Automatic blaster cannons! Incoming missile deactivation shields! I was a little surprised how just the light glinting through certain of the pieces had an emotional memory effect, taking me back to many late night sessions with my old friend Alex Rose... (Any Lego fans out there remember when the clear red pieces started coming out? The red antennas did it for me tonight.)

Anyway, this is not my first time to play with Legos with Ian. But somehow tonight it was special because of the way that he drank it in. As I watched him pace the room, eagerly explaining his pneumatic grenade launcher to me, I felt that he could care less about the conflicts and frustrations of the day because we had our special, secret time together.
So here's to all the dad out there: don't forget to play Legos with your kids! There's still sweet music to hear when you're hunting for the piece you know is there, and your boy's hand is in the bin next to yours.

By the way, I found a collector's site with some old sets I used to have. Click the image to discover the site and enjoy a trip down memory lane. And absolutely visit this site, where some dear soul has scanned copies of the Lego catalogs from 1958 through the present. The space sets from the catalogs of 1981-86 hold a special place in my heart of hearts.