The kids went through a stage when they loved Lego Friends – designed for girls, don’t you know! I was always sceptical about the value of Lego kits. Growing up, we had 1000s of pieces of bundled Lego pieces and tons of plates on which to build something fantastical and magic – often grandiose houses with several garages. (My brother still does this today, IRL, now he has the money).

Kits, though, prescribe how to build. There is no imagination therein, other than the imaginary experiences of the interiors I guess.

“I invited my friend to the Grand Hotel for tea and a jacuzzi…”

It is to be built just so. No, that piece can’t go there!

It turned out that Lola, precise and practical, loved to build the kits but once, then place them on a windowsill. Job done. Zoe, more meandering and distracted, rarely got to the end game, and I was with her. Too much following along, not enough creative play.

In spring cleaning, the Grand Hotel was no longer in demand. It sat on the dining table for a week. Eventually I dismantled it into two ziploc bags. Almost immediately, Lola wanted it back on the windowsill. Too late, my darling daughter. It is destroyed. And once so, it has no value, because it cannot be reconstituted in any other form than the original, apparently.

You know I am itching to make a comparison to some grown up topic of sorts – workplace creativity, learning to deal with challenge and change, pandemics! But today, I will leave it at that. An unresolved end to a childhood toy of meaning.

This Much We Know.