LIFE

Rebuilding With Lego

I thought we were building a car. Turns out I was rebuilding myself

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

I was building a Ford GT40 with my partner the other night. My childhood had very little exposure to Legos. I’m not sure if I should be ashamed of that, but for some of us, our childhood was off the beaten path, so to speak. Hence, I saw myself as a novice sidekick more than a Lego engineer.

My function was to open a packet, dutifully section the pieces accordingly, and hand them to my partner. He then took the pieces and assembled them. Together, we looked at the manual and guided each other. There were six bags in total and each bag took us anywhere between 30 to 45 mins to complete.

Despite that, it took weeks to accomplish the mission. So it’s not as easy as it looks because you need a designated work area and uninterrupted time. Work and life get in the way, and unless you’re committed to the task, a project can be abandoned. Building with Legos is akin to doing jigsaw puzzles. Once you have a basic structure, it’s not something you can carry all over the place. Every piece is important.

As a communication person, I love taking notes on the human factor. I noticed that there was no argument between my partner and me. With every new bag, we improved our timing. There were no raised voices. There were plenty of “thank yous,” “that looks awesome,” and “you’ve got this, darling.”

This was an interesting observation. It was an example of all things governance when done correctly: process, system, and cooperative integration. When working, we focused and remained respectful, and what helped was our unified goal to accomplish the mission (as opposed to just doing it).

“You’d be surprised how often people just start and struggle to finish,” my partner informed me. He was serious about his Legos. It’s not in his DNA to leave anything undone or half-done.

As he clicked and lodged the pieces together, I observed his hands and tried reading his facial expressions. “How handsome he looked when he was committed to something,” I thought to myself. He was enthused and wide awake. I looked at the clock; it was an hour shy of midnight. But something else was happening to me.

Building Legos opened my third eye, an eyeball in a socket I didn’t know existed. A few nights prior, I had read my own essay about the pain of losing my home, a former sanctuary, to my bitter divorce. So much of what transpired post-divorce was about dismantling, deleting, and decoupling.

Like an atom bomb, I destroyed everything that reminded me of my marriage. Digital and physical photographs, momentos, gifts, cards, you name it. All gone, deleted, kaput.

And rightfully so.

I didn’t want to be reminded of a chapter in failure. My marriage not only fell apart but also, unlike romantic movies, was irreparable. All that we had built together became a ziggurat of unholiness.

There was deception, lies, and adultery. To redeem myself I needed everything to be bleached, sandpapered, and disintegrated. All traces of our wedding were cut, removed, and cropped. For the first three years post-divorce, no one in my family were allowed to speak of what transpired while I, quietly and shamefully, battled with alcohol abuse to numb the pain.

To ease my shocking transition, I moved back into the family home to be closer to my parents. They were the only people I could trust with myself and my recovery. But healing was a different battle altogether.

Back at my parents’, I reentered a familiar womb with my tail tucked between my legs. A part of me felt like a failure. Another part just wanted to waste myself with time. “I’m not supposed to be here. I had vowed to leave this place,” I reminded myself.

Yet, here I am.

Low-grade depression conjures an ugly playlist. Instead of rebuilding, I curled up into a fetal position and slept on the same bed I had as a teenager. Call it a state of regression. What I wanted was to feel safe again. Even if it meant transporting me back to my younger memories. Thankfully, for my aging parents, I was home, where they felt I belonged. But seeing me in the state that I was, they became overprotective. Leaving home ever again would be a sticky situation.

There is a danger when you become too comfortable living in the uterus of memories. Granted, I was where I wanted to be: somewhere soft, warm, and moist with love from family. For many years I chose not to move out, ambitiously saving up like I did in my younger years.

You could say all I looked for was safety nets and passivity. I no longer wanted to be in charge, to be correct, or to be the ultra-strong woman I was forced to be. For many years since my divorce, I chose a quiet exit from all that I once knew that was loud, visible, and prominent, as if I had taken a vow of silence.

But that was then. Thirteen cold years have passed. Tonight, it was warm. I am in a better place in my life, and I was building a Lego car with a man I’ve grown to love, correctly and healthily.

As we built a vehicle together, I found myself able to express my suppressed thoughts. My partner listened intently.

There were moments he teased me incessantly, but there were moments he knew I was attempting vulnerability. That’s the advantage of dating a mature man, something that was a deficit in my former partners. My partner is so secure in his own life; nothing I did was a threat, a shock, or a surprise to his system. Instead, everything I did was a new chapter in a book he enjoyed reading.

After three bags of co-engineering a four-wheeled vehicle, I felt a surge of new energy I had long forgotten. It felt like a resurrection.

My partner nudged and encouraged me to keep building, not just physically but also emotionally. After an evening playing pickleball just the two of us, he asked me if I’d like to take classes with him.

At first I was triggered into thinking, “Do I suck that bad that he is suggesting coaching?”

He laughed when I shared the thought. “Of course not. It’s something we can learn together.”

But a greater and more symbolic gesture was around the corner. At a Lego store, he asked me what I’d like to build for my next project. I was dumbfounded. I’ve not consciously co-built anything for many years.

It wasn’t just a gesture for resurrection; it was a call for reimagination. What do I want to build with my own hands?

“You’ll need to find a space to put it. It’s something you don’t dismantle or break apart again. Find a good spot to showcase the model. It’s something to be proud of.”

I was presented with another challenge. I was fond of doing things secretly and having them hidden. It was the way I lived my life. Imagine a squirrel burrowing nuts for the winter in a tree trunk. My partner kept pressing.

What do I build and where do I place it?

It reminded me of how I’m taking baby steps into a serious and meaningful relationship again. Every step is intentional; the love and feelings are unconditional.

I looked around and nothing captured my interest. My partner is as generous as he is patient. “It’s okay. We’ll come again. Perhaps next time, you’ll see something.”

Five Lego visits later, and I was still unfazed.

It wasn’t so much the model; it was commitment. I didn’t want to open a bag and form a structure, only to set it aside. I joked about doing the Eiffel Tower, model #10307.

“Hello, darling, that’s over 10,000 pieces. The tower measures 38 x 59 x 48 cm. That’s going to take 500 visits to finish,” my partner teased. “We’d be dead by the time we’re done with it.”

On our seventh trip to the Lego store, I saw it. Model #40955. The Maersk dual-fuel container vessel that measures over 7 inches high and 23.5 inches long. I thought it was a humble undertaking with only 1,516 pieces.

“Why this one?” my partner asked, amused.

“Remember during COVID lockdown, that ship that got stuck in the Suez? The Ever Given. It disrupted global supply chains for days. I wanted something that captured that moment — disruption, then movement again.”

What I didn’t disclose was how personal that felt. The halt, stagnation, and resumed movement. That was the story of my life.

This was it, I thought.

I didn’t want something ornamental on display. I was no peacock. It had to be something that signified history, a moment that affected us.

The greater truth is it wasn’t just a model that signified a zeitgeist. I’m going to build a ship with someone. It couldn’t be too much or too little. Not overly ambitious but not too easy. It had to be feasible and realistic. It was to sail me into a new chapter in my life.

How many bags and how many evenings will it take us? We don’t know. All I do know is with each piece of Lego we will assemble, we are building a new structure. Not just a model, but a life being redesigned from the inside out.

A terraformation.

The bigger revelation wasn’t the ship. It was learning to be a co-engineer. For years I assumed I had to lead, carry, solve. I didn’t know how to reach out and actually receive.

Now I do. That in itself is the build.