Photo: Christine Kufske, www.clickphotography.ca
My daughter and I were in the produce section when it happened.
?What a beautiful baby!? Pause. Eyes flick up. ?Is she yours"? My jaw clenched. I felt awkward, angry and, weirdly, embarrassed. I was so floored that all I could say was, ?Yes. Thank you,? with a smile that didn?t reach my eyes.
My daughter and I do not look alike at first glance, so I guess it?s a fair, albeit rude and intrusive, question. I?m mixed race* (black dad, white mom), with curly dark hair and brown eyes and skin. My husband, Mike, is a blue-eyed white man. Simone, 22 months, is fair-skinned with blue-grey eyes and straight hair, while our son, Theo, 4, is darker-skinned with big brown eyes and curly hair. Neither of my kids look black, and I do. I know this. But I never considered the optics until that day in the grocery store?which, considering how I grew up, was perhaps naïve. My older brother and I were the only mixed-race kids I knew in our predominantly white, mid-size suburban town. My parents always told us, ?You have the best of both worlds,? and I took it to heart. I loved eating my Polish Babcia?s perogies just as much as my Bajan dad?s coconut bread. I danced polka around the living room with my Dzia Dzia and wined to calypso and soca with my large Caribbean family.

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