Rites of Passage: Innocence Found

Rites of Passage: Innocence Found
Our yard was toilet-papered last night. The sight greeted
me as I opened the front door in my robe, on my way to
retrieve the newspaper on this blustery Saturday morning.
I had seen such displays before, but always from the road.
>From my secure vantage of hustling and busting I would look
at the homes of parents of children older than my own, and
shake my head with naïve amusement as wearied dads with
strange, bemused expressions raked the fluttering ribbons
from their trees. It was just one of the things that
teenagers did, I figured. I had no reason to take the
point further, except to recognize that the scene was part
off a world of parenting teenagers that I knew lay
somewhere ahead.

Suddenly, I am there; the sight catching me unaware of an
inevitable certainty, much like the first look at a snowy
august morning. I suppose I should have seen it coming.
Starting from the day when my youngest caught me skipping
pages during reading at bedtime, changes seemingly beyond
my control have become more frequent. All of a sudden I'm
not privy to the details of the conflicts between my
children and their friends at school. Telephone
conversations between my children and unknown sources of
information stall when I pass through the room. Suddenly
my children don't miss the double entendre of PG-13
comedies; instead, they blush, or worse, laugh as if they
have heard the joke before.

Initially I was honored to see the ?tribute in white'. My
son must be popular if someone spent so much time to do
this, I reasoned, as if by association his popularity
reflected my parental achievements. But I also felt
somewhat unsettled. I stood in the middle of a scene
heretofore reserved for others, for those older families,
and realized that I had been initiated into one more phase
of my life. Once more I was being pushed into a new era of
parenting, with little warning, and with no formal
training. Such is the nature of parenting. In no other
job are we expected to adapt, and to ?ad lib', to such an
extent. We aren't told "Oh, there is a TV to fix in
there- I know you haven't done it before, but we're
expanding beyond widgets". My only preparation at this
point is a vague recollection of hearing from those who
have been here before me that I should make sure the mess
is cleaned up before it rains. I'm not sure why that is
important.

I am also touched by a melancholy memory, of the days of my
youth and of innocent pranks. Sometime between then and
now, pranks seem to have taken on a meaner quality; images
of ?soaping windows' morphing to fears of tainted Halloween
candy, or burning bags of dog droppings on porches changing
to reports of bombs in mailboxes. The display in front of
me this morning reminds me of those innocent days gone by,
and I am again touched by the care that has been taken- the
bench from the porch carefully balanced atop the basketball
backboard, the avoidance of the small tree with the nest of
baby birds, the placement of our ?security sign' neatly in
the bushes, where it could easily be found. And nothing
has been done to the mailbox, as if in recognition that a
mailbox is no longer a thing of innocent pranks. The whole
display does not suggest delinquency. Rather there is
almost the suggestion of moral character, of knowing the
difference between right and wrong, between old-fashioned
youthful mischief and modern delinquency.

I wonder if the distinction between innocent pranks and
delinquency is even possible in our ?modern world'. As we
try to protect our children, we steer them from potentially
mischievous activities lest innocence and evil be
mistakenly confused. "You could be shot- or arrested!" we
say. Pranks have always had an edge- but it seems that we
used to know where that edge was, and more importantly, we
genuinely knew that it shouldn't be crossed. Yes, we made
mistakes- I think of the late night many years ago, when my
friends and I left the mannequin lying on the porch of my
parents' house, rang the doorbell, and ran away. I can
still hear my mother scream as I think about it. Or I think
of the prank phone calls made during a sleepover, and of
the guilt I felt later as I read in the small town
community newspaper about the elderly disabled woman who
was frightened by them. But the stakes seem higher now,
and so from the enlightened vantage of parents, we don't
mourn the loss of innocent pranks. Their loss is a
trade-off for safety, and we accept the loss as an
inevitable casualty of the future. They are just another
lost privilege, like the quick airport check in lines of
the 20th century. By some bizarre progression of society,
we can clone an embryo, but we can't find a way to allow
trick-or-treating after dark.

But on this morning, my sweet melancholic memory will not
be denied by adult pessimism. As the sun breaks the clouds
and strikes the brilliant streamers, I realize that
innocence is still everywhere, if I choose to look for it.
I notice again that nothing is broken, and the baby birds
in the nest in the small tree are still hungrily chirping.
And then I see the toilet paper hanging on the trees for
what it is; a sign that all is well. The world is very
different now, yet some things, at least this morning, are
the same. And I smile as I chase the kids outside to clean
up the mess, quickly, before it rains.

----------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey T Junig lives with his wife and children in Fond du
Lac, Wisconsin. He has worked as a neuroscientist and as an
anesthesiologist, and currently is a psychiatrist in solo,
independent practice. More articles can be found at his
psychiatric practice web site, http://fdlpsychiatry.comand
at http://Wisconsinopiates.com , the web site of his
chronic pain and addiction practice.