Some people keep photo albums. Apparently, we build ours out of bricks.

Some people meditate.

Some people do yoga.

Some people sit quietly, breathe deeply and clear their minds.

I apparently require several thousand tiny pieces of plastic and an instruction book.

Welcome to LEGO therapy.

There’s something about sitting down in front of a pile of bricks that makes the rest of the world disappear for a little while. I don’t have to solve anything. I don’t have to make a decision. I don’t have to think ten steps ahead.

I just have to find the next piece.

And then the next one.

And then the ONE PIECE I NEED that was literally sitting in front of me the entire time.

Very relaxing. 😂

It Calms the Noise

I’m not exactly sure when building LEGO went from something I do to apparently we need dedicated display cases for this, but here we are.

Some builds take a weekend. Some take much longer. Sometimes I can sit there for hours completely content.

And sometimes I reach the point where I announce that LEGO is stupid, this is absolutely NOT relaxing and I am done for the day.

Usually I come back.

Because for all my joking about LEGO therapy, there really is something therapeutic about it for me.

When I’m building, my world gets smaller for a while.

There are instructions. There is an order. Things fit where they’re supposed to fit. Eventually, an enormous pile of pieces becomes something recognizable.

For those few hours, my brain has somewhere quiet to go.

It calms the noise and brings me joy when the world around me isn’t always so pretty.

Apparently, We Have a Collection

Walk around our house and you’ll discover LEGO pretty much everywhere.

There’s Cinderella’s Castle. Main Street. A vintage movie camera. Pac-Man. Donkey Kong. Snoopy. Peter Pan. Italy. Ride vehicles. Our kitchen.

And a replica of Dan’s first Atari.

That one makes perfect sense because Dan still has every video game console he has owned since the 1980s.

Every. Single. One.

I build LEGO.

He apparently runs an electronics preservation society.

This relationship was inevitable. 😂

Of Course There’s Italy

Because going to Italy, bringing home approximately half the country and then trying to make our house feel a little like an Italian villa apparently wasn’t enough.

I needed Italy in LEGO, too.

There’s something about that little scene that makes me happy every time I see it. Maybe because Italy became more than someplace we went.

Pieces of it followed us home.

Some in our memories.

Some in our kitchen.

Some of the approximately 30 ceramic lemons that somehow made it back to our kitchen.

And apparently, some in tiny plastic bricks.

Then There’s Peter Pan

This one is different.

My mom named me Wendi because she loved the Broadway version of Peter Pan.

She changed the traditional “y” to an “i” because she wanted it to be different & because all the cousins’ names ended with an “i.”

So all these years later, Peter Pan, Wendy and Tinker Bell sit on a shelf in my house, built one tiny brick at a time.

I don’t think I consciously chose it because it connected me to my mom.

But maybe I did.

And Obviously, Snoopy

Did anyone really think we were going to tour my house without finding Snoopy?

Please.

My favorite beagle has his doghouse, Woodstock and a typewriter.

At this point, Snoopy has traveled with us, attended our wedding and established himself throughout our house, so LEGO representation feels less like a choice and more like a contractual requirement.

Obviously.

But This One Might Explain Everything

I have a LEGO version of our kitchen.

Not a kitchen.

Our kitchen.

The giant island. The stools. The refrigerator. The stove. The flowers.

There are even tiny lemons on the island.

Of course there are.

Long before there was What’s Up with Wendi, there was Kitchen Time w/ Wendi.

And long before either one had a name, the kitchen was simply where so much of my life happened.

It’s where we cook. Where we host. Where friends gather. Where Sunday sauce simmers for hours. Where holidays happen.

And where everyone inevitably stands around the island despite the fact that there are perfectly good chairs approximately three feet away.

It’s the heart of our home.

So maybe it shouldn’t surprise anyone that eventually I built that, too.

I Thought I Was Building LEGO

When I first started thinking about this story, I thought I was going to write about why I build.

About LEGO therapy.

About slowing my brain down.

About the satisfaction of turning a pile of bricks into something.

And then I started walking around our house taking pictures for this post.

The castle. Italy. Peter Pan.

Snoopy. Our kitchen. Dan’s Atari.

The rides we’ve ridden. Places we’ve traveled. Things we loved as kids and things we love now.

And tucked among all of it are two little LEGO people named Wendi and Dan sitting in front of a giant LOVE sculpture.

That’s when it hit me.

I haven’t really been collecting LEGO sets.

I’ve been building memories.

Some of them are mine.

Some are Dan’s.

And more and more of them are ours.

For a few hours at a time, everything else gets quiet and I concentrate on making something.

Maybe that really is my version of meditation.

But when I’m finished, I don’t just have another LEGO set.

I have another little piece of our story sitting somewhere in our home.

Some people keep photo albums. Apparently, we build ours out of bricks.

And considering the amount of LEGO currently in this house, apparently we have a lot of stories.

So yeah.

I think I’ll keep building. 🧱❤️