"Is this your child too?"

So today I decided it would be nice if I took my kids out to eat for breakfast and spend a little quality time together...because honestly they were starting to bug the crap outta me and usually they act way better once out and about.Well while at IHOP paying for my half off breakfast because I had received a coupon on Mother's Day that I decided to make good use of, I encountered the dreaded question that haunted my young childhood. I can still remember the exactly question, the setting, and how it made me feel to that day! The question went as follows:
"Is this your child too?"

To most people this would seem like no big deal....pure curiosity right? Well to me it is a blunt reminder of how much my son doesn't look like me. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't wake up every morning crying over it. To me I see so much of myself in him but I guess to the unfamiliar eye, he looks like a kid I'm babysitting for a Caucasian neighbor.

As a young girl, my mother, my sister, and I were at some counter...hotel, doctor's office....not sure but I remember the woman at the counter asking my Mother if we were her kids. For those of you unaware, my Mother happens to be white. She, like so many other women decided to marry a black man and have herself some mixed babies. Result from doing so can be that you produce children that don't necessarily resemble you. Having heard this stranger just ask my Mother whom I love oh so much, if we were hers honestly made me question if I really was. I struggled with this for years, asking her if I were adopted or something, was she really my Mom, and that if I also had a twin because for some reason when I was younger I really wanted one. All answers were no fortunately. But it was the first time in my life where someones question made me look at how my skin and my physical features looked so different from the person who gave me life. It even got so bad that I use to cry and beg my Mom to move us back to Long Beach so I could be around people who looked more like me. NO JOKE!! She even remembers this.

Basically, this random waitress' comment today stood out to me, not because I myself haven't gotten over that childish nonsense with my skin color, but because I don't want my son to ever feel the way I did as a child growing up with a Mother that didn't look like me. I don't want him to look at his sister, who actually happens to be darker than me and asking himself why he isn't the same color as her. Actually I wish color of skin or ethnicity wasn't ever a factor or something thought about in his life. But with our ignorant society more than likely it will be. Let's just hope he doesn't ask to move to North Dakota to be around people who look more like him....because that isn't gonna happen! ha ha

(My Savior in Disguise, Ty)

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