We Build What We Can

Image credit: Photo by gilest on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

A friend forwarded me a link to a wonderful blog post by Christopher Niemann full of minimalist Lego representations of all things New York. The heading, above photo after photo of clever little scenes and objects, reads:

During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, I spend a lot of time with my boys in their room. And as I look at the toys scattered on the floor, my mind inevitably wanders back to New York.

Now at first, I'll admit, I felt terribly jealous. It's such a compelling scene: Christopher Niemann sitting on the floor of an apartment in Berlin with his children. The bleak and barren forms of buildings stand cold and dark against the ice grey sky outside. But inside the room is warm and cheerful, and the floor is littered with colorful plastic blocks. Mr. Niemann gazes out the window at the unfamiliar German cityscape and is overwhelmed with longing for the familiar skyline of Manhattan. He idly picks up a block. Then inspiration hits, and he recreates bits of his old home within his new one. He describes each piece to his children, who -- captured by delight -- wax rhapsodic, then eagerly join in the fun. "Ah, father. I love the way your 'Plastic Bag, Caught in a Tree Branch' encapsulates the angst of urban living. Oh, I have an idea. Let's do one about the Mets and the Yankees now! I'll make a Mets cap and you do the Yankees."

It's a scene that (while certainly vivid in my imagination) has never actually taken place in my house. My first thought on seeing all those Lego creations was: This guy actually gets to play with Legos? No fair!

Legos were one of those things, like pretend play, that I really looked forward to doing with my kids. I thought that I too would make cute little projects like "Lego Empire State Building on St. Patrick's Day." But the number of Lego projects I've been able to design and create is holding steady at zero. It's not that we don't have Legos; we've got bins upon bins of them. And it's not that my kids don't like Legos; they themselves have made some fabulous creations. I have pictures of them with Lego trains, Lego trees, Lego houses, Lego dinosaurs: all of their own design. My son even built a Lego Mama almost entirely from blue Legos. (And I have to say, I looked pretty damn good with a blue pixelated face.) But I still have yet to make a single creation of my own.

I thought the problem might be that the kids had no interest in forwarding my designs. I mean, apparently even Christoper Niemann didn't want to make "Lego Bagel with Lego Lox." So, I tried switching tactics and attempting Lego versions of the things my kids do like: "Hey, look kids, I'm going to make a Lego Pikachu!" But I'd never get beyond one little yellow toe before life happened: someone got hungry or stepped on a Lego and needed a kiss or got tired of playing with Legos or started fighting or (more often) wanted my Legos to build their own Lego Pikachu because I was Not. Doing. It. Right. It turns out my kids like playing with their Legos themselves much more than playing with Legos with me (or even letting me play with the Legos myself). The nerve!

The only time I get to build anything at all is when we are pretend playing school and it's pretend choice time. Then I get to build with regular blocks. But not Legos. My pretend teacher won't let me.

Then it occurred to me that Mr. Niemann may not have children who are wonderfully indulgent of his own creative urges. I mean, my kids don't sit here and watch me blog. Maybe he does the same thing I do: watches the kids, gets inspired and then waits until they are asleep to work his magic. I picture him, like me with my laptop, sitting up late at night hunched over the Legos he's stuffed in his pants pockets during bedtime and smuggled out of the kids' room creating something that is of and for them, but in which they don't yet have an interest.

But then another thought occurred to me: maybe necessity is the mother of his invention. Maybe his three piece Lego Manhattan or four piece Lego Long Island are not a genius of economy and scale, but something born of his own kids' refusal to let him play with Legos for more than 15 seconds either. When I looked at the little objects a second time, I smiled, because this time they screamed not "What enviable family fun!" but "No, Daddy, I want that piece!" And then those little pieces of Manhattan, made in Berlin, started to look a lot like a vision of home to me too.