Innocence

my friend Enrique who sleeps at Plaza Mayor

The stroller was parked at the front door, and I sat on the couch stuffing a backpack with Alleke's things when she walked over and handed me her blankie.

"Put this in the backpack," she said, "because I want to sleep with it on the bench tonight."

I'm sure I would have had no idea what Alleke was talking about except that a week earlier she had asked me about the man who sleeps on the bench at her playground.

"That man is homeless," I said, trying to find words to explain the situation. "He doesn't have a house to sleep in, so he sleeps on that bench."

Alleke frowned.

"But why doesn't he have a house?" she asked, looking up at me.

"I don't know," I said with a shrug. "Maybe he can't find a job, so he doesn't have money to pay for a house."

Alleke stared at the man for a while longer, and then ran off to play in the sand.

That night after I had kissed Alleke goodnight and gotten up to leave her room, she said to me, "Daddy, when I'm homeless, I'm going to sleep on a bench."

"Oh sweetie," I said, kneeling next to her bed again, "you don't have to worry about being homeless or sleeping on a bench because mom and I are going to take good care of you, okay?"

Alleke nodded.

Every day since Alleke asked me about that man sleeping on the bench, however, she's been making elaborate plans for her own survival when she's homeless and has to sleep on a park bench. I suppose kids who grow up on a farm imagine being farmers someday. Kids who grow up in town pretend to run the grocery store or teach at the school. Kids who grow up in the middle of the city imagine what it would be like to be homeless.

I mentioned Alleke's obsession with being homeless to my Spanish tutor, Jesús, and he said, "Kelly, you can't tell your kids everything. You have to simplify things for them, so they can understand."

"Are you going to tell your two-year-old daughter why that prostitute is standing on the corner?" Jesús asked me, grinning with the satisfaction of a point well made.

Jesús was right, of course. I had considered it a personal challenge to explain to Alleke even the most complicated situations because living in the middle of the city with a toddler, it didn't seem possible to protect my child's innocence. Was it realistic to think that I could avoid explaining homelessness to Alleke when there was a homeless guy sleeping on a bench at her playground? Innocence was out of the question, so I thought.

But, when Jesús framed the situation with extremes, I could see that I did have my limits. Maybe I simply wasn't willing to fight for Alleke's innocence. Maybe I had given up already.

The purpose of innocence, as I'm beginning to understand it, is not overwhelming our children with complex experiences and decisions that they don't understand, and as a result, are not able to process well. It's better to teach our children values and beliefs using the small things first so that as they grow up, they can apply those same values and beliefs to larger, more complex situations and decisions.

Speaking of complex situations, now I just need to find a way to convince Alleke that she can sleep in her bed tonight, not on the park bench down at the playground.