Sadly, Life Doesn’t Come in Numbered Bags

My daughter’s childhood was filled with Legos. Pirate Legos, Minecraft Legos, buckets of random Legos, elaborate kits, tiny pieces that somehow always managed to find the bottom of my bare feet. There were Legos everywhere. She loved them. But like so many things from childhood, eventually the Legos faded away. The sets disappeared, the little bricks stopped showing up in every corner of the house, and life moved on.

Then one day, years later, I saw that Lego had come out with a Winnie the Pooh set. By this point, my daughter was in college, so buying her a Winnie the Pooh Lego set seemed a little silly. But I kept looking at it. There was just something about that little tree and Pooh’s tiny house that I thought was ridiculously cute. If I’m being truthful, I kept thinking about how much fun it would be to build. So, on a whim, I bought it.

The next day, I opened the box, dumped out all those little numbered bags, pulled out the instruction book, and started building. Somewhere along the way, something strange happened. My brain got quiet. That constant buzz that is usually running somewhere in the background just... stopped.

For however long I sat there, I wasn’t thinking about what needed to be done tomorrow, what I had forgotten to do today, who needed something from me, or what might go wrong next. I was looking for a little brown piece that was exactly four dots long because the picture on page 37 told me I needed it. My brain loved it!

There was something incredibly comforting about following those little diagrams and building something one tiny piece at a time. There was no decision to make, no wondering if I was doing the right thing. Find this piece. Put it here. Turn the page. Repeat. Maybe part of the appeal was that life doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t come with numbered bags and a little diagram showing you which piece goes where. Most of the time, we’re just making it up as we go along and hoping we haven’t accidentally put something on backward 47 steps ago. But with Legos, there was always a next step. If I followed it the instructions eventually all those random little pieces became something.

I finished that Winnie the Pooh tree, and I was hooked. I went right out and bought another kit, and then another, and then another. Before long, our house was overflowing with Legos again, except this time I couldn’t blame my daughter. Somewhere around kit number three, it occurred to me that maybe I had gotten this whole Lego thing wrong. Maybe all those years I thought Legos were my daughter’s thing, they were quietly waiting for me too. I just hadn’t taken my turn yet.

But as much as I loved seeing the finished sets, I didn’t actually need another Lego flower arrangement, tiny building, or miniature typewriter decorating my house. What I wanted was the building part. I wanted that quiet. So the kits kept coming. Not because I had a burning desire to fill my house with tiny plastic things, but because I had accidentally discovered something that gave my brain a break.

Then Lego came out with the Disney Castle, and this thing was huge. My husband bought it for me for some holiday, anniversary, birthday, or one of those occasions where after enough years of marriage you stop remembering exactly what the gift was technically for. I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to build it. Except I did wait and wait and wait.

It wasn’t because I didn’t want to build it. I desperately wanted to. But I didn’t want to start it because I didn’t want it to end. As long as that giant box sat there unopened, I still had all those hours of quiet waiting for me. It was almost like having peace stored in a box. Once I opened it, I knew the countdown would begin. Bag one would become bag two, bag two would become bag three, and eventually I would put that last little piece into place and my brain would turn itself back on.

I think that castle sat there for almost a year before, in my head, I heard Mufasa from The Lion King say, “It is time.” Once I started, it took me about a week, and yes, I loved every ridiculously tiny piece of it. Eventually, though, I got to that last page, found that last piece, and it was done. I stood back and looked at this enormous Disney Castle that I was ridiculously proud of and had absolutely no idea where to put.

But find a place I did. It ended up in my office, on top of a cabinet, and I actually loved having it there. I’d look up at it sometimes and feel this ridiculous little sense of accomplishment. I built that thing. All 4,000-something pieces of it. It sat there for about a year, and then life changed, as life tends to do, and we decided to move across the country.

We were downsizing, so I knew most of the Lego sets couldn’t come with us. I picked out a few of my favorites, and yes, the Winnie the Pooh tree and the Disney Castle were at the top of the list, and sold the rest. I guess I had reached the stage of my life where I had to decide which Legos were important enough to move across the country.

Then, while I was packing up the house, I went to move the castle from the top of the cabinet. You can probably see where this is going. Just as I cleared the top, it tipped. The entire top section of the castle fell off and pieces went flying everywhere. Somehow, most of the castle was still intact, so I tried very carefully to put what was left into a big plastic bin. More pieces fell off. I tried again. More pieces.

Finally, I gave up. I broke down what I needed to just to get the whole thing into the bin, snapped the lid on tight, and decided Future Me could deal with it. As it turns out, Future Me wasn’t any more interested in dealing with it than Present Me.

It’s been more than a year now, and I still haven’t opened that bin. I keep telling myself I’ll rebuild it when I have time, and lately I’ve actually been thinking about it more and more. But every time I think about opening that lid, I feel a little intimidated. Because this time there are no neat little numbered bags. There’s just a giant pile of Legos. Before I can even begin rebuilding the castle, I’ll have to sort through thousands of pieces and figure out what belongs where. There won’t be a nice little bag marked 1 telling me exactly where to start.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t opened it yet. The thing I loved about Legos was that they made everything feel manageable. Open one bag. Find one piece. Follow one instruction. Turn the page. This castle isn’t like that anymore. There are no numbered bags. No obvious place to start. Just thousands of pieces all mixed together in a plastic bin. Which, now that I think about it, sounds an awful lot like life...imagine that.

Maybe one of these days I’ll finally open that bin. Not because I suddenly have a few uninterrupted days to sort thousands of tiny plastic bricks. Let’s not get ridiculous. But lately, instead of thinking about what a nightmare it’s going to be, I’ve started thinking about how much I’d like to see that castle standing again.

I know rebuilding it won’t be anything like building it the first time. There will be no numbered bags, no perfectly organized little piles, and probably a fair amount of swearing. But somewhere underneath that giant pile is still the castle I loved enough to haul across the country in a plastic bin. It’s still there. It just doesn’t look much like a castle right now.

Maybe that’s what has changed for me. For more than a year, I’ve looked at that bin and seen a project that felt too overwhelming to start. Now I’m starting to look at it and see something I’d really like to put back together. I don’t know how long it will take, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be nearly as peaceful as the first time around, but I think I’m finally curious enough to open the lid.

Because things fall apart sometimes. Even things we worked really hard to build. Even things we thought were safely sitting right where we left them. Sometimes all we can do is gather up the pieces and keep them somewhere safe until we’re ready to figure out what comes next.

Being in pieces isn’t the same thing as being ruined. That castle is still in there. All of it. It may take some time, patience, and probably a few choice words to figure out how it all fits together again, but for the first time in more than a year, I think I’m ready to open the box.

Plot twist: Maybe you don’t need to know where every piece goes before you begin.