I often walk into my kids’ rooms, survey the area, inhale through clenched teeth, and exclaim something in my native tongue after the equivalent English word simply escapes me under the circumstances. The other day I mumbled, “You built a Luftschloss!”
(Luftschloss: n (idiomatic) castle in the air, pipe dream.)
What I saw was a pink castle perched on top of a construction crane, perfectly balanced, and my son, beaming with pride, beside it.
My little guy snubs at engineering probabilities and conventional wisdom.
Gravity?
Get over yourself.
Loosely connected Lego pieces won’t hover in mid-air?
Ugh!
Geometric foam shapes won’t fit at absurd angles?
Argh!
My “Gaudi-in-training” prefers caterpillars that function as helicopters, pirates that give haircuts, and huge basement spiders called Myrtle, which makes sucking up the hairy things in the vacuum cleaner an act of piracy.
As the little brother in the house, he’s been the recipient of several recycled toys from big sis. There’s plenty of pink going ’round. While my daughter’s winged fairy and princess collection comes fully equipped with its own fortress, the Disney stronghold has lavender battlements and sticker-frescos. Prince Charming didn’t even bother. Too much girliness.
Things have evened out over the years, of course, and zebra stripe patterns have woven their way into her room. Cinderella has once again been dealt the dirty end of the stick. When I found the disheveled princess under my daughter’s bed the other day, a brief bout of nostalgia instantly gave way to reality as I muttered, “suck it up, buttercup,” under my breath.
After retrieving the lost fairy tale soul, I took stock of her ever after: a pink castle, a flowery clubhouse, a pastel-colored dresser. My daughter’s room featured more Art Deco design than even Miami Beach could handle. Time to clean up and enter little brother into the equation.
My son is more of a Bauhaus kind ‘a guy. Streamlined. No nonsense. Toy trucks lined up in a row.
Prince Charming would love his room. It goes from chaotic construction site to neatly lined-up corporate fleet in the same afternoon – the best of both worlds.
So when it was time for a toy inventory assessment, my son selected several nuggets from big sis’ room, one being the pink castle.
The castle set up shop on the traffic rug in his room, next to the construction crane. The hot pink now neatly clashes with the signature “Tonka” yellow – it’s South Beach all over again, but with more vehicles around than a Saturday night’s worth assortment cruising along Ocean Drive.
My husband and I don’t promote stereotypes, so when the lavender-trimmed burg became Handy Manny’s new digs, we congratulated ourselves on taking recycled toys to a new level. Sustainable toy-swap practices become particularly interesting if you have a boy and a girl, so it’s always fascinating to see how things play out.
My son stacks; that’s his philosophy. If it’s in his room, it’s stackable. So when he decided to lift the castle and balance it on top of his crane in the two minutes I turned my back, I should have been more nonchalant, saying “of course.” Instead, I marveled at his lofty ambitions and unrestricted engineering feats.
I’m a lucky mom. My kids are naturally curious and not always bound by common sense and conventional thinking. Those things will taint their explorations soon enough, so I’m enjoying the freedom for now (with a close worrywart’s eye, of course, and a cup of coffee in hand).
I did end up taking the castle off its precarious perch, but not until after I took a picture, as I have done dozens of times for my guys’ other original, untainted messes.
Das Luftschloss
