The Ears Have It

By JOSHILYN JACKSON

SO My nine year old daughter, Maisy Jane, has been agitating for pierced ears since she was seven. I objected. Strenuously. Not because I grew up in a VERY conservative church (although I did) where it was held as gospel that only slatterns, loose women, and future fishwives would pierce their maidenly ears before high school.

My objections were more pragmatic:

1) I had my ears pierced when I was in eighth grade, and I had an immediate and severe allergic reaction. My lobes puffed into red ooze-y balloons of pustulant misery. At the time I felt pretty sure this was the Lord's visceral response to me slatternishly getting them done a year before it was proper (according to Leviticus).

I pulled the earrings out and let the holes close up....

OKAY, FINE! I may have had a tiny frisson of retro-worry that if Maisy Jane got hers done a full FIVE YEARS before was religiously proper, God would smite her slatternly lobes RIGHT OFF HER HEAD....but I QUELLED that with an icy blast of Presbyterian Pragmatism. God, I told myself, has bigger problems these days.

And truthfully, I was more worried Maisy might have inherited my metal allergy, and would suffer the pus-addled miserable fate. BUT! EVERYONE ALIVE pointed out they now had nickel free uber-hypoallergenic supersonic earrings of the future, and even The Boy in the Bubble could get a stud through his eyebrow if he really wanted one.

2) But still I said no, because I KNOW my kid. She HATES pain. This is the child who comes to me with every pinprick sized scab and faint grey-ish speck of bruise, tear stained and demanding life saving medical intervention. This is the child who SCREAMS and crumples to the ground and writhes and clutches her head and flails, and then goes limp and stares accusingly damp-eyed at me from the floor if she has to have a TANGLE combed out.

I just KNEW I would end up with a child who sported a single hoop earring like a pirate, because she would never sit still for the second puncture wound after experiencing the "mild pressure" the internet said would occur. One man's "mild pressure" is my girl-child's "being set on fire."

BUT! EVERYONE ALIVE said that at Claire's, they arm two girls with piercing guns and, as your child clings desperately to the Claire Bear, they simultaneously stab open BOTH sides of her head.

All my reasonable, rational concerns had been addressed...and yet, I still did not take her. Not for months, even though Scott and I had discussed it and we had already TOLD her she could.

Why?

I think I was just resisting the adult-ness of it. She is, after all, my very youngest, and for me, it was a rite of passage. Okay, granted, it was a failed, pus-ridden, swollen, MISERABLE rite, but still. It was my first real, clear indication that my mom knew I was growing up. If Maisy got her ears pierced, that meant SHE was growing up, too....and I DO NOT LIKE IT.

This is my YOUNGEST, my little, my sugar-pie, my snootchy bear, the baby-est of all my babies.

She is also a tall string bean of a girl in fourth grade now. She has learned to roll her eyes and stand with one hip cocked. She secretly likes a boy. She gets some of my jokes. She covets lip-gloss. She still calls me Mama most times, but she has also learned the two syllable exasperation-clad cry of, "Mo-om!" She reads books with no pictures. Hell, she read books with KISSING in them. She IS growing up, whether I like it or not.So.

Reader, I pierced them.

Or rather, the nice lady who owns the local Claire's did it. She was working the store all alone, so I tried to say OH NO WE NEED BOTH DONE AT ONCE NEVERMIND and put it off AGAIN, but she took us both in hand and popped Maisy in the piercing chair and!

WHUNK!

One ear was punctured, and immediately Maisy hollered, OW OH NO I HATE THAT DO NOT---

WHUNK!

And that was that.

Maisy grabbed the mirror and said, "Mama! I look SO GROWN UP!" And oh, but she did!

Rite accomplished, both pierced, and the super-earrings of the future caused no trouble, no allergic reaction or infection at all, and everywhere she went she was made much of and told she looked like quite the young lady.

As rites of passage go, it was a remarkably bloodless one. A lot of young southern boys have to shoot Bambi in the face to get that kind of approbation.

What was your rite? What act or moment let you first feel that you were moving toward your man-hood, or stepping closer to your womanhood? Did you or would you or will you let your kids do the same? Earlier than you?