Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself . . .

. . . You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

—KAHLIL GIBRAN, ON CHILDREN

After the tragedy at Columbine, adults see us as the Devil.

—AUDRA ADAM, 15 (PATNAICK AND SHINSEKI)

Opening scene: My father is attending a Sunday service at the Unitarian church here in San Diego, shortly after the minister married him to my stepmother, who is a congregant. I am near Lyra’s age, with my brand-new stepsisters in Sunday school, and we are discussing our class’s upcoming project: to build a Pygmy hut in the canyon behind the church so we can study other cultures. Parallel dimensions? Maybe not, but when you’re eleven, a Pygmy hut is awfully darn close.

Meanwhile, back at the service, the minister steps up to the lectern to deliver his message. While doing so, he makes the casual aside that, of course, as Unitarians, neither he nor his audience ascribes any particular supernatural divinity to Jesus—that “we” are all sons and daughters of God, but that Jesus did not die on the cross to save us from anything.

MY FATHER: (in disbelief and horror) WHAT?

MY BRAND-NEW STEPMOTHER: (somewhat patronizingly) Oh, come on, Paul. Surely you don’t believe all that nonsense.

MY FATHER: (very uncomfortable) Well, no. (beat) But I don’t want my kids thinking like this!

Adios, Pygmy hut.  …