And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.
I never played with Legos. For one thing, they weren’t out yet when I was a kid. But there was a Lego-esque toy that I loved. It had 2 sky blue plastic pegboards, and then a bunch of multi-colored multi-sized tiles, and you put them on the pegboards to make pictures. The tiles didn’t stick to each other, just the pegboard. You could make pictures from the diagrams that were included, or you could make your own. I spent hours with that, and I know I kept it into adulthood…but I don’t have it now. I’m not sure when I got rid of it.
When my first three kids were born, there were many Legos, from the Duplos for little kids to the Legos we all recognize. I used to sit and watch my kids play with these, and marvel at what they made. These Legos came in big bins, and you made your own thing. There weren’t patterns yet. All I could do was click them together; I couldn’t make anything.
As my kids aged, suddenly the Lego models appeared, and by the time Olivia was playing with Legos, there were Lego stores and Lego Lands and Lego, Lego, Lego. It makes sense…the kids who loved these bricks wanted to keep creating as adults.
A little time passed after Michael died when my son Andy and my daughter Olivia introduced me to Animal Crossing Lego sets. Animal Crossing is a Nintendo game, and I’ve played it on many Nintendo systems – the GameCube, the Wii, the Switch, and now the Switch 2. It’s pretty much the only video game since the Nintendo era that I’ve played. With the kids’ help, I picked up a few small sets of Animal Crossing Legos, and then the three of us began to spend Lego nights, ordering pizza and chocolate frosted brownies and putting together the sets. I was amazed I could actually make something.
I had…fun.
Then, I discovered that Lego made a typewriter.
In my AllWriters’ classroom, there are several antique typewriters. In my lifetime, I’ve gone from a Royal manual typewriter, to a Royal Selectric electric typewriter, to a word processor to a tower computer to a laptop. Imagine that. There are three especially dear typewriters in my classroom. One is a small typewriter that folds over onto itself, and I bought it when I was sixteen years old from a rummage sale. It was five dollars. I was there first with my mother, and when I was pulling out a five-dollar bill to buy it, she said, “What in the world would you want that for?” So I put the bill back in my pocket. But later that afternoon, I slipped out of the house, returned to the sale and bought it. It was an antique then, and now, fifty years later, it’s antique-ier.
We’re both antiques now.
There is also a cat-ear antique typewriter that looks exactly like the one John Boy borrowed from the Baldwin sisters on the Waltons, when his hand-written short story was rejected by Collier’s Magazine. They said the story had to be typewritten. I was walking by an antique store in downtown Waukesha when I saw this typewriter in the window. Despite its amazing weight, I cradled it in my arms on the rest of my walk home.
My original Royal manual typewriter was blue, and given to me by my parents on the Christmas before I left for college. Like the tile set, it disappeared somewhere along the way, along with my Royal Selectric and the word processor. But for Mother’s Day a few years ago, my son Andy and my daughter-by-proxy Rayne showed up with a dusty pink Royal manual, just like my blue one. A piece of history came back to me.
And now…there was this Lego typewriter. It was an adult set, so much harder than the kids’ sets I’d been doing. But for my 65th birthday last July, the same typewriter-toting kids brought me the Lego set.
I was excited, but intimidated…and also overwhelmed by everything that happened since January 17, 2024, and already having trouble keeping up with my everyday life. Grief doesn’t make appointments, and it would reveal itself at the worst times, leaving me basically helpless, and ultimately, sick. So the Lego typewriter pieces sat in their box from July until a few weeks ago.
I’ve been sick all winter, basically, going from antibiotic and inhaler to antibiotic and inhaler, and finally tested positive for the newest form of Covid a few weeks ago. The exhaustion, the difficulty breathing, and just not feeling well was my final straw. Still testing positive for Covid after two weeks, I decided to take off the next two weeks too, and then there’s two weeks when I am on the Oregon coast. A six-week break, unheard of in my life. A very scary thing. But necessary.
The day before I tested positive for Covid, I sat with my son Andy and my daughter Olivia in the AllWriters’ classroom and started building the typewriter. They helped with the first steps, and at one point, it had to be torn apart and restarted. But now I’ve been working on it on my own at night.
It makes my mind work in new ways. I’ve never been good spatially, and I have to look at the diagrams and try to recreate them on my classroom table. There’s been a lot of swearing. But there’s also a lot of satisfaction in the click of one Lego fitting into another, and having it start to actually look like a typewriter.
I feel like I’m accomplishing something I couldn’t do before. I’m not sure what word to give it…it’s not a mindless activity. But it’s so focused that when you’re doing it, all other thoughts – and feelings, like fear and sadness and anger – go away.
Amazing.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
