Let’s learn about the dreamers who dreamed us. The stories, the tales, the voices, the faces. The heroes who acted heroically and the scribes who recorded it, knowing we’d be here, now, wondering across the centuries.
Let’s pass the stories on to our sons. Let’s show them where they fit into the Lineage of the Boy. When they come in at night — when the bikes have been put away and the scraped knees bandaged — let’s show them the mysteries and the wonder, the tradition and the adventures of those who paved the way for us and for them.
If we see this in terms like “history lesson” or even “education,” let’s keep that a little secret among us parents. Because, after all, we are just that: parents. People who intuitively, instinctively want the best for the new generation dreaming in the bunk beds upstairs. We want them to know, as they inch toward futures, that they have a past — a history that will help them grow into better people, better citizens, better men. Yes, we are parents, we are a family, and now, too, we are a company. To us, it’s a logical extension of an immutable truth — a mission, really: we will do everything we can to imbue our sons with the courage, the confidence, and the character our history can illuminate.
So we’ll read with him from these books full of amazing stories. And then he’ll bring the stories to life with these action figures. After all, boys are kinetic learners, agents of action, and there is no better learning for them than play. Reams of research tell us this, but we hardly needed the scholars to tell us what our eyes had already seen.
And what we’ve seen is this. Sons who play. Sons who learn. Sons who listen. Not just to us, their parents and grandparents, but to wise voices from another time and another place. Those dreamers who dreamed us, they have much to say, and if we teach our sons to listen carefully, they might be tuned in all their lives.
“Me and you, we’re not so different,” the voices will tell them.
This is how the wonder jumps. Not from a past that talks down, bores, or condescends, but from a living past that’s always there — pushing its story forward, giving gifts to the young, and sweeping us all up into the adventure.
