"Mom? How do you feel about piercing?"

"I feel like once you're 18 years and older, you can decide."

"I want to get pierced." My son is 16 1/2.

Sigh. Let's talk.

This is a picture of the type of piercing he wants. He brought it up last night to show us.

"I don't think I'd look good with a pierced ear. And mom, you know I've wanted a pierced ear my whole life. [true]. I don't like the eyebrow piercings. I think I'd wear a stud, not a ring."

I remind him that it hurts. And you have to take your piercings out for any job you get. My husband reminds him that you can't wear piercings in the Airforce if he decides to join. His group of friends are all starting to get piercings. For them, it is a rite of passage.

Carolyn Myss, one of my favorite writers and philosophers, once talked to a whole group of pierced teenagers late one night outside of a 7-11. She came to the conclusion, after the talk, that their piercings were taking the place of rites of passage that we no longer have in our culture. The only place you find them anymore is within Judaism and the Bar and Bat Mitvahs that mark the passage from childhood to adulthood.

I think that's why we see the fight clubs and hazings happening more and more. Our youth need to demarcate when they leave their childhood behind and embark on precarious adulthood. My son is exactly in that place. He is no longer a boy. He is a man in a teenage suit, waiting for highschool to end so he can start his life. And getting a piercing, with his friends, is one way to mark this.

It helps that I worked at Starbucks for 3 1/2 months with all the twenty-somethings running around with their tat's and pierces. They took out all studs and covered tattoo's with make-up before starting their shift. They were very responsible about it.

"I want to wait until my 17th birthday in July," he said. "Then I'll go with some friends and get it done. I've already picked the place." Meanwhile his friends are getting their ears/eyebrows pierced.

My 48 year old brain says No! We don't get pierced in this family! [or is that my mothers brain channeling itself through me?] What kind of uncivilized, barbaric ritual is this? And then the living in the moment Me of 2009 thinks, "it's okay. He needs this. And it's a breaking away from his family and their rituals and making one of his own." Am I rationalizing? Or am I understanding? I don't know.

My step-daughter is now 30 years old and getting a masters degree. She is tatooed from head to toe, literally. She is pierced in at least 4 places, that I know of. So my husband says placidly to my son: "Well, you know, S. is pierced and tattooed and I haven't seen that it's made any negative impact on her life."

So two old fogey baby boomers, who are not tatooed, nor pierced, open our hearts and our minds to a new way of being. Simultaneously I ache for the little boy I once had and wish godspeed to the man I'm witnessing appear.