Love, Space and LEGO: A Personal Journal
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Life gives us gifts in so many ways. I was gifted with a wonderful husband and two amazing children. If you have read my earlier articles, you know that we have faced some hard times together, but the challenges have led us to grow and understand each other even more. Sharing LEGO is a big part of our lives as a family, and I like sharing our experiences with you.
I hope that our story will give you some insights that I would have found helpful when I first joined the AFOL world. Today, I will connect these joyful thoughts about love, space, and LEGO with my spaceship build “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Join me for happy times and an adventure in space!
The spaceship IEV Sunshine is an Interstellar Exploration Vessel that travels in space looking for planets with sentient lifeforms and new plants that could be used for medicines. Vi is the captain and Yor is her husband, who is also the ship’s mechanic. The two scientists Lema and Mari have a robot called Gjor, an alien wildlife expert. The last crew member is the pilot Tor. Today is Tor’s birthday, and Mari is preparing a birthday "fika" (feast).
The captain Vi, Lema, and Gjor have moved in the terrain from the original landing site so they decided to relocate closer so they all could celebrate Tor together. All while the mechanic Yor is traversing the wing to find a small problem with the solar panels. We hope they all have a nice fika and continue on to a successful mission!
That’s the story that developed when I built this model in the fall of 2019. Sci-Fi was my first book crush, and I still love to read Sci-Fi and fantasy. I wanted this story to be all about family and the joy of being with people you love. I have a very wide concept of family and believe that you choose who your real family is.
During the time when I was building this spaceship, I thought a lot about how I could go from just trying to survive to start living and enjoying life again. The key part of that is my husband and children. They are the most important thing in my life—my love for them keeps me grounded and hopeful even in the darkest times. My heart rejoices every time my youngest son wants to show me his inventive building solutions or when my oldest looks up from his very enthusiastic Star Wars diorama and gives me a warm smile. But my heart also soars with the feeling of togetherness when my husband and I find ourselves alone together occupied with looking for cool parts in some unsorted LEGO—the kids having moved on long ago...
When building the IEV Sunshine spaceship, I had to change direction several times. The spaceship did not portray my meaning as much as I wanted, but it came alive when I populated the interior and built my crazy alien landscape.
It is called “A Stranger in a Strange Land” because we all feel like strangers in many situations but that can’t stop us from being brave and going forward, taking steps to find more joy in our lives. The title is also a nod to the author Robert A. Heinlein and his book with the same name.
The ship has four engines—two under the wings and two in the back end of the spaceship. They are made with blue LEDs controlled by an Arduino so the light flickers and moves. My husband figured all that out. It was so much fun planning and talking about solutions during mealtimes and collaborating about something so “unimportant” and just build it for the fun of it. We learned a ton of stuff and my husband got the opportunity to take up his interest in electronics.
Our kids were also invested in this build with suggestions and thoughts of who these people living in this spaceship were. Both of my kids build LEGO all the time. Sometimes they build sets but often just their own creations and roleplay with minifigures. As parents, we share the hobby with them in different ways. My husband is so generous and has a Duplo-sized amount of patience. He takes time to play along and is the perfect problem solver when our kids want to build things that defy gravity.
I don’t have those qualities and I often have a hard time committing. The beauty of being an AFOL parent is that we can build our own things side by side and connect. There are many thoughts my kids have shared with me over the building table. This is a gift to receive and hard to achieve in a world full of homework and activities.
We have made our dining room into a building/sewing/computer room, and it is one of my favorite places in the world. I have my own LEGO sorted and my kids have their LEGO grouped in rough categories like windows, tires, plates, bricks, minifigs, Star Wars and Minecraft—and a whole lot that’s not sorted. We made the mistake of sorting all their LEGO, and my oldest son stopped building! He needs chaos to build!
I have a desk, and we recently changed the room so the children have their own bigger table to build on. We prefer that they build on a table so they do not have to break apart MOCs after every play session. They tend to save a lot of builds, so the easiest solution we’ve found is to avoid building on the floor.
Several times, I have had to defend to non-AFOLs why I have LEGO that is mine alone. If they ask, my children can borrow or get pieces. My oldest son and I like to barter pieces, especially minifig parts. My youngest likes to borrow pieces and knows exactly which part he wants, but sometimes there is a teaching moment for both of us in communication and description skills. It is totally natural to them that we collaborate like this over something that essentially is a toy. So that is my answer now as a more experienced AFOL—it can totally work having your own LEGO. Explain to your children and be assertive over your right to have something just for yourself.
Other children visiting do not always understand how our unwritten rules work. Once, I found a 5-year-old standing on my building table to get to drawers that were high up… It was an “Oh, dear!” moment. I helped him down and explained this “strange” set-up. I still enjoy being a cool LEGO-mom and hope it will continue many years to come.
We buy LEGO sets mostly around birthdays; we all love those presents that have that beautiful LEGO rattle. At other times, I can buy something for the entire family. We build it together, the kids play with it as a set for a couple of weeks, and then I take it apart and sort the parts into my personal collection.
I also like having an open dialogue about LEGO. We talk about it if the kids want something, and they can earn money through chores and buy it when they have earned the money. My husband and I communicate around big LEGO purchases and what we think is a good level of LEGO goodies. I believe it is unfortunate if something that should only be about enjoyment sparks conflict.
The summer of 2019 was the first time our whole family went to a LEGO convention together. I was bringing a whole lot of builds and was standing by my display almost all the time during the three days. My oldest loved sitting behind my teardrop build, next to me, building his own things.
I have a couple of “starting lines” that I say to engage when people look at my builds, different ones depending on age. It took my son a couple of hours to learn all of them, and then I started to hear him whispering the next word I was going to say all the time. I did not know I was that predictable before that!
When the spaceship was finished, I spent a whole afternoon putting it up (my builds are not easy to assemble) at a local show. My children were going to help me at the show the next day, and we were all disappointed when it was discovered that they had chickenpox. I had ordered name tags for them to have during the show reading “Malins hjälpreda” which translates to “Malin’s helper.” The show was not the same thing participating and showing my builds when not sharing it with my family. This hobby is so much more meaningful when I can share it with the people I love the most.
My husband is great at so many things but just his presence makes me feel loved, accepted, and confident that I can do everything. When I ask him for help, he always answers “Yes” in his easy manner and wonders what he can do to help me. His help with the spaceship electronics gave us a taste for this kind of collaboration and made us plan for even greater projects together.
My point with all of this is that I hope you all have all the support you need in your LEGO passion… but if you don’t, there is an AFOL community out there that will welcome you with open arms. I know where my heart is—with my loved ones. And I can share with you that I, in the last year have found ways to really live and to be happier. Family is what you make of it, no matter if it is a circle of AFOLs, a group of international BrickNerd contributors, or even a research team in space celebrating a birthday!
Who do you share your LEGO passion with? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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