I Called Them Little People

For children 2 – 6

I Called Them Litttle People

by

Elisabetta Panzica

 

There were worlds within worlds, filled with colors and light, so beautiful there were no words with which to describe them.  There were entities there that I called friends, little people no bigger than the palm of my hand.

I was 10 years old and life was full of wonders.  My belief system had not yet been tainted.  I was able to see the world, as it really was, pure, simple, and beautiful.

On warm summer days I liked to go out into nature, watch the little people go about their business.  I learned that every tree, plant, and flower, had a name, and the little people knew each one by heart.  They nourished each blade of grass with the greatest of care, helped the flowers grow, and kept watch over creatures great and small.

I helped them sometimes, they taught me how to see so that I was able to see their world as plainly as I saw my own.  On one of those magical summer mornings they told me a story of how their world and ours had been one.  Of how humanity lost sight of all other worlds but their own, forgetting the splendor that had once been theirs.

I am older now, but I still recall those magical days, still remember my little friends.  People sometimes call them leprechauns or gnomes, but I call them little people, because they look just like us, except they are very, very, small.  They have families like us, children and pets, cities and homes, books, dishes, toys, all sorts of things. They cry and they laugh, some are wise, others not.

Theirs was a world filled with magic, where miracles were commonplace.  Their magic was simple, grounded on faith.

As I was growing up they came and went as they pleased.  I would see them scurry across the room as I played with my dolls.  They seemed like tiny shadows racing across the floor, their silhouettes painted pictures upon the walls and I laughed as I watched them play.

I built a home for them out of cardboard and different things I found around my parents home, spent hours putting it together. Shaping medicine bottles into tiny pots, I planted beans inside each one, which quickly sprouted and grew into long fragile stalks. I made pillows and tablecloths, out of old dresses, used popsicle sticks to make chairs and tables, and little green strawberry baskets for couches, I cut them to just the right shape and size.  I did all this, because I had learnedto love them, and I honored their friendship.

I had become a part of their world and they of mine.  However, as I grew older their visits became less frequent, and the magic that we shared, less available.  I don’t know what it was, perhaps growing up made the magic stop, or grownups who insisted it was all some silly story.  I don’t know, but I do know this, they were real as real as you and I.  For after all these years, I still have a very real gift they left me.  A small white pearl, stained with sap. They had used fresh sap from a tree to stick the pearl to tiny slip of paper.  A note I had written, thanking them for coming to the home I built them.

I miss them sometimes.  Today, I can only visit them in my dreams and I’m grateful that our paths did cross.