Naked Lunch.

I cannot keep clothes on my children.

No, we don’t live in a nudist co-op, though we do live in San Francisco, which has its own brand of tolerance of nakedness in public. But it’s not as if we point at the naked people and say, “Look, kids. See that paradigm of human body acceptance over there? Emulate him.”

And, honestly, I couldn’t keep clothes on these kids when we lived in Tennessee, either. It’s not the city, man, it’s the freedom.

And, apparently, I’m a terrorist. Because I hate their freedom.

I just discovered 2/3 of my children playing inside their cardboard box rocketship wearing a total of 1 article of clothing and 3 accessories between them. At least Shephard had on pants. That is a rarity.

This is the only photo I could post without drawing the attention of child services.

“Babies,” I asked, sitting down on the floor in front of them, “Why aren’t you wearing clothes?”

“Me nay-kid!” Baby girl cheered.

Shephard rolled his eyes. “You’re always telling us we can’t be free.”

So I guess I’m the man now. Or the modesty police. “Well,” I tried to explain, “clothes help us stay clean.”

“But we’re in our home,” he said. “And we keep our home really clean.”

I didn’t want to argue, but he was sitting in a cardboard box with a bowl of cheese cubes, some of which had been spat back into the bowl, two apples with browning bite-marks, and last night’s leftover macaroni and cheese.

“Besides,” he said, “You’ve seen my junk before.”

“Yeah! Me nay-kid!” baby girl cheered again.

“Fair enough,” I said, resigned that this stage of their lives would have very few photos I could share outside of my immediate family. “But when we go to Dolores Park — or, really, anywhere outside of our house — you must wear clothes. And keep them on.”

Shep looked at Harper, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Okay mommy. But I might try really hard to forget this, okay?”