Always building

My grandparents had a basket of legos. It was on a peg, held high in the opening between the living and family rooms. Balanced precariously on a nail. When they weren’t looking, my sister and I would take turns jumping up and down to knock it off it’s nail so we could get them down.

We succeeded a few times.

Other times we’d move furniture over to reach—coffee table, chairs, even a rocking chair—which didn’t work out so well.

We could have just asked an adult to get the basket down, but that seemed too easy, and figuring out how to get them down ourselves seemed to be half the fun.

The basket of red, white and blue legos were so different than our red, yellow and blue. They were the ones our mom and her siblings played with. The held secrets our own did not. Don't get me wrong, we loved our legos, but we loved these legos. There was something magical in them. They had stories to tell. And no fancy sets, just the red, white and blue squares, counted in 1x1, 2x1, 3x2, etc. A language all our own.

We built houses and towns, furniture for our dolls, cities for our matchbox cars. Worlds previously unknown. Only limited by our imagination—and ability to get the basket down from the doorway.

I guess I've always loved old things. Looked for their potential, begged them for their stories. I'm still doing that.

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