I BOUGHT my first Lego set last year at the ripe old age of 40. The set, admittedly, was over-the-top—a 2,300-piece re-creation of the Ghostbusters Ecto-1 vehicle with a ghost trap and a gunner seat.
I remember calling my wife from theLego store. We were in the lockdown stage of the pandemic, my face was flushed with embarrassment, and I asked her if I could spend $200 on a toy.
I was ashamed because I couldn’t tell her that it was for our seven-, five-, or one-year-old. No, this toy was for me, a man seen (by some) as a (somewhat) responsible adult who comments on politics and current affairs on TV and in reputable publications.
To back up, my family entered lock-down mode before Covid. My now-six-year-old, Nusayba, received a stage 4 cancer diagnosis in April 2019. Overnight, we became a “hospital family,” living on the edge of uncertainty and unable to give our children any semblance of “normal” experiences.
At some point between our numerous and exhausting hospital visits, my oldest, Ibrahim, asked me to buy him a Lego Ninjago set. Despite my drawn-and-quartered state of mind, I handled his request and later that night I assembled it with him. From the moment he sat on my lap till the final brick, he was enraptured. He was focused. He was still. And something else unexpected happened: So was I.
Over the next two years, Ibrahim and I built. Each time, we entered into a “zone,” quietly creating, brick by brick, something wild yet ordered. Nusayba even joined us, if only to sit on my knee to watch us create. In those moments, I could tune out the smartphone alerts, the blip-blip-blip of my daughter’s various hospital monitors, and the worry and the dread.
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While cancer and Covid played for all the marbles, we played Lego.
Like most experiences you come to cherish as a parent, Lego time with my children was brutally ripped away from me by my children. After two months of building with me, both Ibrahim and Nusayba decided that they no longer needed my help.
I responded by moping, and my long-ing and anxieties grew stronger—which led me to the Ecto-1.
I built the Ecto alongside my kids on our dining table, the bedrock of a now-vibrant Lego City, where they create new models and story lines without instructions or rules. Many of the sets in that burgeoning metropolis are mine.
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Voltron stands behind the 1989 Batmobile and Ecto-1, next to the Infinity Gauntlet and many Simpsons characters, who seem to be preparing for The Purge: Springfield at the Kwik-E-Mart. They’ll soon be joined by my latest build: a classic Nintendo Entertainment System of my youth.
These past few years taught me that I had to relearn the act of focused play as something that’s not childish or immature. In fact, it’s downright necessary for adults, now more than ever, to help anchor us to both joy and calm during a period of immense uncertainty and anxiety.
My daughter has survived cancer thanks to a liver donation, and I Lego on. While the kids sleep, I steal a few minutes to Lego just for myself, building a sense of structure whenever the world seems to be falling apart.
A version of this article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Men’s Health.
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