essay by Robert P. Barsanti
The first thing you need to know is that the Legos are staying. They are in plastic buckets and bins, assembled, half assembled, or dissipated into an accretion cloud of colorful plastic bricks and smiling mini-figure heads. But they are going to stay.
The rest could go.
The time had come to put away childish things. In the golden quiet of an autumn afternoon, I was cleaning out childhood: boxes of old math papers, instruction manuals for gadgets, wires, and at least one gaming system based on putting an ugly plastic figure on a glowing pedestal. All gone to the Take It or Leave It and to parts beyond.
Except the Legos. The Legos had been assembled into fighter planes, space craft, drilling platforms, helicopters (dozens), and trucks (hundreds). Since their little boy hands could curl around a brick and NOT put it in their mouths, Lego blocks had built their birthdays, Christmases, and the occasional bored afternoon off-island. They were to be placed on shelves, overlooking the years from the luxury suites on the bookcases.
If you are lucky enough to have kids, you acquire accessories which for an afternoon or for six months, prove indispensable. Because they proved their mettle and worth, you don’t want to send these items on—you might need them again. But the truth is, the jobs that they were hired for don’t exist anymore. The Baby Bjorn was a phenomenal tool on a flight once. I stood in the back of the plane, near the toilets, then swung and bounced the young man into a cooing happiness instead of a screaming distemper. Hard to send that off to Take it or Leave it after it did such good service. But the young man is over six feet tall and weighs more than I do. He won’t need it.
For the parents, so much of the pack rat hoarding comes as a way to stop time and preserve the moment. As each of these treasures gets unearthed, the horcrux brings back a time—and a boy—that is lost to now. To throw out the sleds isn’t just admitting that the sleds aren’t going down the hills of the Quaker Cemetery this February, but that the whole experience is getting tossed with it. That Dad life is over.
Oh, we know that it was valuable. We know that in the Lego creation of the young man’s mind, this sled is a brick that supports a whole edifice. We hold our hands in the Lego for a moment until the modern world steps in and laughs at our old man foolishness.
So it goes. Beach chairs, life vests, an electric pump to inflate air mattresses and the like, snow pants, soccer balls, and Thomas The Tank Engine—all loved, all valuable, and all out of our time. On Nantucket, we are lucky to have a culture of re-use and re-cycle. The Horcruxes of our parenting can go to other parents and, if we are lucky, they can prove themselves worthy to a new family. Such things were given to us in a time of need, and we can give them to others. Or so I tell myself.
Some things did not earn their flowers. In the back of the shed, behind the badminton net and the snow shovels, sit two extra seats for a Toyota SUV. Now, back in the glorious time when the oldest son was an uncomfortable foot pressing on a bladder, we bought a new car. Not surprisingly, we wound up buying the most comfortable car we could find, so that when the time came for driving over railroad tracks, we would have something comfy to do it in. In that car, the Toyota engineers included a third row of seats which would have done wonders for the Oompa-Loompas, Minions, or Munchkins, but anyone with adult legs would have been challenged. Since we needed room for a pack-n-play, a stroller, and a 126 pack of diapers, we took those seats out and stored them for a “never” when we might need them.
Well, never eventually came. They remained in the shed through Thomas the Tank Engine, Matchbox Race the Volcano, and every single Lego set. The car had long since succumbed to the salty nibbles and bites of Nantucket winters, but the seats remained. Unstoried and unstained, the seats sat on the grass, blinking in the sun. I photographed them and put them on the internet, in search of a good home for 26-years-old seats to a model of car that had disappeared.
And yet, they were collected and put to use. I returned after sunset to find their place empty and my heart filled. Even they had a use.
In the most generous light, most of this stuff became the scaffolding we put up in order to create the young person within. The white angel costume on the broomstick is too large to remain in the hall closet, but on three nights, it was an invaluable part of a play. Nobody can use it now; the grandchildren would have some serious questions if it would reappear to haunt them. But for the young man who held it, the angel led him down a path that led to college and now to adulthood.
At some point, when we give up our childish things, we no longer need the scaffolding. But someone else does. In my parenting experience, I looked and listened to those who came before. They had solved the problem that I had right now. If they thought I needed the Baby Bjorn on the plane, they were probably right. Nantucket is a community of child care, be it as fathers and mothers, or aunts and uncles, or ice cream customers with tip money.
All of us measure our time in children, even if they are not yours. And if those kids can use the sleds, the trains, or third row of seats, they are welcome to them.
But the Legos stay.
