ME: Honey, do you know why all the sales people kept telling you how pretty your eyes were today? RUBY: Because I have brown skin and they don’t think brown skin is very good. ME: Well (crap), no. (Think quick.) That’s not why. (Address it or not to address it, that is the question.) I [...]
I was running down the stairs, weighted with my overstuffed backpack, jammed in next to all of the other students—some going in my direction and some going up—trying to make it to fourth period on time, when she hit me in the back of my head. For no reason that I can remember now, or [...]
Every Wednesday at 5-o’clock, Ruby has swim class. Once her thirty minutes of floating, leaping, belly-flopping and retrieving pink plastic rings has elapsed, it is our routine to head for the locker room and change her into her “soft pants.” This has proven to be a giant effort because while I’m trying to get her [...]
I’m back from a most spectacular gallavant across the pond and let me tell you that, amazing as this might sound, I didn’t die from fright. I was riding the Metro in Paris all by myself on day two, nearly imploding from fear, when I realized that, from the outside, I probably looked completely competent [...]
I had just come from Madalena’s and was driving to meet my husband for a late afternoon drink when I got picked up. Never mind that I had worked out that morning and was still in my gym clothes, marinating in my own grit and stink and general grossness derived from being packaged in Lycra [...]
One comb out, a few tears, a great new stylist and 3-1/2 hours later (no, that’s not a typo), this is what her hair looks like. She chose the “clicky-clackies” and her birthmother chose me.
Real questions I received from grown adults during a 24-hour period this past weekend. Ruby was within earshot for all of them: “Adoption? That is so wonderful! I want to adopt my 20-year old maid. I love her but I don’t know how to adopt her.” “Why is her skin black and yours isn’t?” “Do [...]
Much of the literature I’ve read about transracial parenting has said that three is the age at which the questions about race begin. I’ve been apprehensively waiting for the inquiries, hoping I’d have the right answers when put on the spot. I’ve tried to prepare myself for it, and at the same time—however wrong this [...]
Ruby’s grasp of language seems to have exploded in the last week. She was a sappling on Friday morning, I swear, but she somehow sprouted branches and roots in every direction by sunset, which is when she pointed out that I hadn’t asked Sam to pass the salsa please. Polysyllabic words and multi-sentence paragraphs, combined [...]
“When I grow up, I catch the moon! I jump real high and catch the moon!”