Smashing Legos

Sundays, aka The Lord’s Day, aka A Day of Rest, tend to be a very trying days in our household. They typically start with church, which is less therapeutic and meditative and more stressful and infuriatingfor Tighe and me. It’s the closest we ever get to divorce.

And this particular Sunday, Sam, whose church behavior has been pretty great lately, was in rare form. He was pretty quiet for the first half of the service, coloring in his composition notebook that he brings with him each week. Then suddenly, he was flipping over the pew in front of us, head first, his legs sprawling into the air like a gymnast. Lou had fallen asleep across my lap, so I watched helplessly while Sam embarrassed us.Classic Sam. 

Afterwards, we walked down the sidewalk to where our car was parallel parked about a half block away. Our friend, Kelly, who’d also been at church with her three kids, cruised by in her SUV and rolled down the window. 

“Enjoy your da-ay!” she called out. Cheery, but I picked up on her sarcasm. She must have sensed Sam’s mood.

Tighe walked ahead, carrying Lou in his car seat while I took up the rear, carrying the diaper bag over my shoulder and pulling Tess along by the hand. Nate and Sam were running back and forth between us, taking turns playfully shoving one another and bending down to shovel some three-day old snow into their mouths. 

Eventually the playful shoving escalated, and Sam paused to drag Nate down by the collar. In retaliation, Nate scooped up some snow and stuffed it down Sam’s back. 

“Ooh, that’s taking it too far,” I quipped as I passed them on the sidewalk. Sam hates to be wet. And cold.

“Ow!” Sam squealed, spinning out of his winter coat and trying to shake out the snow. “Nate! You’re making me pee!”

By this time, Tighe had started the car and was snapping Lou’s car seat into its base. I was only a few yards away, but I glanced back to call for Nate and Sam to hurry up. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet and there was a cinnamon roll at home calling my name. Also coffee.

“Nate! Sa—Oh, good Lord!” 

Nate was running to catch up, but Sam was standing in someone’s driveway, his coat on the ground and his pants around his ankles. 

He was peeing! He was peeing in someone’s driveway. Two girls from their school live in the house across the street. And next to them is another family with three girls.

And Sam, days away from his sixth birthday, is standing, facing their houses, peeing. 

“Tighe!” I shouted, calling for him to turn around and watch. “He’s peeing!”

And it was a long pee. Not quite Austin Powers, but maybe Jimmy Dugan from A League of Their Own. I cringed and hurried to the car. When I reached the passenger side door”””

“Sam! You can’t do that stuff anymore,” I said once we were safely in the car. “You’re too old for that. I think it’s a misdemeanor!”

But Tighe’s words were more impactful.

“Sam!” he said, “you will notget a cinnamon roll when we get home!”

We arrived home, made breakfast and resumed our typical lazy Sunday: laundry, Lego’s, Lou’s nap, etc. 

Within an hour or so, Tighe was fed up. He was already stressed with some other matters, and their bickering and shrieking wasn’t helping.

“Get out!” he said.

“Where should we go?”

“To the neighbor’s house!”

“Which neighbor?”

“I don’t care—any of them!”

We have a boatload of kids on our block, so this wasn’t an outlandish command. In fact, Nate and Sam played with the twin boys across the street for over two hours, and that break helped.

We survived dinner, and while I cleaned up the kitchen, I could hear Tighe upstairs coaching them through getting their pajamas on and brushing their teeth. And it was clear from the tone of his voice that he was losing patience fast. 

Finally, about twenty minutes before 8, we were convening in Nate/Sam/Tess’s room—those three share a room now—for bedtime prayers. I was holding Lou and he was losing it—tired and hungry and overwhelmed by the chatter and yelping and roughhousing of his older siblings.

Suddenly I looked at Sam, who was squatting on the floor in front of his dresser.

“Sam!” I gasped, “What are you doing?!”

He was gripping something tiny in his fist and using it to etch a pattern on the drawer of Nate’s dresser. A dresser which had been passed down from Tighe’s grandmother’s grandmother. And was in really great shape. Until that moment.

Just then, Tighe, who had been folding laundry and filling the humidifiers with water, entered the room.

“What did he do?”

I just pointed.

“Sam!” Tighe growled. Fiercely. He was definitely full-on angry. Not that fake angry that you sometimes pretend to be as a parent to drive a point home. He was mad.

He proceeded with some sort of lecture about how much the dresser meant to him and his family and how it had survived several generations until Nate and Sam decimated it. It was really quite moving, and by the end, Sam was in tears. 

But the tears were from his own anger, not because he felt guilty. He felt unjustly attacked.

“Get…in…bed,” Tighe barked. And even Tess understood that he was mad. She and Nate scrambled into their beds. But Sam remained crumbled in a stubborn ball on the floor.

“Get in bed,” Tighe said a second time, much calmer this time.

“No!” Sam yelled back.

In my arms, Lou had stopped fussing. He seemed to sense the tension, curious about how this would play out.

“Sam, do I have to tell you a thirdtime?”

“I’m not getting in bed! Because you’re mean!”

And that’s when Tighe lost it.

“Look what I’m doing!” He pulled a Lego Ninjago dragon from the shelf and held it above his head. Sam had gotten it for Christmas two years ago and spent hours putting it together, then proudly displayed it on his bookshelf by his bed ever since.

I saw where this was going. Oh, yes! Smash it!I thought to myself, giddily, I have married a great man!

Sam’s eyes widened. Nate sat up in bed to watch. 

“Nooooo!” they both shouted.

But he did. He smashed it on the hardwood floor and tiny plastic Legos scattered across the hardwood floors.

Sam immediately burst into tears. 

“You’re the worst,” he screeched, “I hate you FOREVER!”

Nate collapsed his head back down onto his pillow, defeated and anguished on Sam’s behalf.

I cheered silently to myself as I ducked out of the room to put Lou to bed.

“Yeah, Tighe, you’re the worst!” Why Tess felt the need to defend Sam is beyond me. He spent a good portion of that day tormenting her. But it’s also a bit reassuring. Siblings are friends for life.