The Capacities We Had as Children

A couple weeks ago, I received phone messages from two young brothers whose father had just finished reading them Hoodoos, a book I'd written and published in 2004.

The younger brother, age seven, identified himself, then said, “Stuart, I really hope you can write more books, so please, write more. Bye.”

Right on its heels came another message, this time from the older boy, age nine. He began to say his name, then stopped himself and said, “Oh, you probably know me. I really love the books you've written. I’m reading Natives (2002) after Hoodoos. It’s really amazing. I really want you to write more. Bye.”

Upon hearing their words, an important element in my life was resurrected. The Larbu and Tia books had slipped from my mind. Now they came roaring back to life. Just what, I wanted to recall, had led me to write those books?

It began nearly forty years I ago when I created bedtime stories to tell my children. I named the protagonists—a brother and his younger sister—Larbu and Tia, and built the stories on a foundation of imagination, inspiration, possibility, and wonder after having learned of the first civilization of humankind during my studies at my acupuncture institute. We human beings had formerly honed capacities for healthy connectedness and communication; for building a consensual, healthy world; for realizing our dreams; for creating long and healthy lives; and for making good decisions at every turn. These capacities, that idyllic world, became the basis for those bedtime stories.

My children, with their imagination, intuition, universal spirit, and inspiration still intact, loved hearing the stories. In addition to the mystery, drama, and intrigue I would inject into each story, I painted a picture for them of that long-forgotten world. 

But as my children became older and their parents’ marriage unraveled, their passion for the Larbu and Tia stories dimmed as they increasingly looked away from family to their friends. One day it struck me that the stories might someday benefit other seven-to-ten-year-olds, so I took to writing the stories down, filling them out, creating them anew. 

My children did not like hearing of my intention. And none of them, to the best of my knowledge, ever read one of the books once they were published.

Eventually, I remarried and with my new wife, searched the nature of those capacities I'd learned of, those we'd collectively, as a civilization, resigned to dormancy long ago. Over the years, the capacities slowly began to reveal themselves and informed us as to how to awaken them. 

I concurrently found myself having insights into the day-to-day nature of the first civilization, and imparted this into a publishable draft of the bedtime stories.

I wrote, Mary edited. It was a labor of love. Once we’d complete and publish a book, however, we had little energy left for getting the word out. Never did. I’d counted on news of the books passing from one reader to the next. But times had changed, and I did not feel aligned with the marketing called for in this 21st century. 

So when those recent phone messages arrived, after all these years, I cried joyously. The boys' passion made the books and all that went into creating them worthwhile.

Then, several days ago, a call came in from the nine-year-old’s mother.

“Mommy,” he had told her, “would you ask Stuart if I can have permission to turn Hoodoos and Natives into movies? I want to get his work out into the world so that people will return to their feelings and the world can really start to heal.”

Times are trying, imagination and inspiration at a premium, dimmed by a last-chance frenzy—a grab for the remaining material goodies, for individualism, for power. Dimmed, too, by the ever-growing allure of information and science, these having grown so dominant as to be overriding our other, crucial capacities, rendering a balanced world impossible.

Today would have been one my early children’s birthday, the one who objected most upon learning I’d begun writing the Larbu and Tia books.

“But, Dad," he'd said, "those stories were meant for us.”

Since the publication of Natives almost twenty years ago, I’ve questioned my choice, but have never doubted it, in spite of all the boxes of books that linger in our shed. Over the years, there have been adults who have said about the Larbu and Tia books, “It’s all in there, as long as you’re willing to search.”

When my son moved on from the stories, he started rejecting his exceptionality. I am feeling his undying spirit and am recalling the unique capacities he possessed as a child, capacities that were common during the first civilization but, upon our search of materiality, we pushed away. For instance, he was always previous to what a person was going to say or how that person was going to act. These were invaluable capacities, but they made people uncomfortable, and that made my son an outsider. 

Might he be smiling on those two lads now, cheering them on, encouraging them to be brave and to adhere to their passion in the face of our prevailing culture? I like to think so. These boys aren't stopping, and they're not interested in putting their innate capacities on the shelf. May we follow their lead.

Maybe they'll let us all watch the movie.