The "color of water"...the color of wind.

[Skidmore]

I so long for the day when color is not a brick wall. I want to see this change in society before i die. My skin is fair and freckled and my husband's skin is as dark and rich as mahogany. What I see in his eyes has no color. What I hear in his laughter has no color. We both bleed red and cry the same color of salty tears. But what I see when we go out in to the larger community is sometimes disapproving looks from mostly older couples. We've experienced these reactions from every shade of flesh. We've made it a point when we run into acquaintences from our respective races who choses to try to ignore the presence of the other to make them acknowledge our spouse, and have found that quite often getting past that initial hurdle often opens the door to being acknowledged the next time and being able to chat freely later. I've learned that meeting peoples' eyes and greeting them with a smile and a warm hello will often register a look of surprise and then and acknowledgement and a nod or smile or a "hello." My husband does the same.

Oh, for the day that our humanity can flow around us like the water or the zephyrs, essential and pure and free.

[lonestarnot]

1. The color of sunshine! and moonbeams!

[notadmblnd]

2. I read that book, it was a mothers explaination to her bi racial

children about what color god is. But I have to say we never experienced anything like you described from the public. Perhaps we both looked to mean for people for mess with or maybe it was the demographics, we live in the north. My husband has passed now and I'm raising our son. Now, he an I get the looks, but they're not disapproving. The looks are more curious in nature, you see, people can't tell with any certainty what his ethnicity is. He can pass for White, Black, Hispanic, Indian or Arab, he and I have been asked often. sometimes we tell people, sometimes we don't.

[Skidmore]

3. I read the book, too.

I know what you mean though. My first husband, now deceased, was from the middle east and my children from that marriage are very differently from one another. My daughter is very much like me, but her brother has olive skin, black hair, and dark eyes. When they are with their stepfather and me in public, people get confused. People also get confused when the two of us (my husband and I) are just out together. I get really po'd when we go someplace to conduct business and the person will start conducting the business with me and totally ignore his presence. Lots of white clerks/businesses people do this, but I get the same treatment when in businesses in my brother-in-law's neighborhood when we go to visit. That is why we steer the interaction so that the person includes us as a couple. When the person will not engage, we leave and they lose our business.

If Christians in particular believe that we are created in the image of God and God is a spirit, then the soul is what should transcend and we should be to one another "the color of water."

[Booster]

4. Well said. I love "the color of water" idea. I don't think I've ever

seen an even remotely "bad looking" bi-racial child/adult. Usually they are just beautiful.

[notadmblnd]

5. I see what you're saying I think

But my husband was not a person that could be ignored. He was very tall and very strong but that is not what drew people to him (and he did draw people). I told him several times he missed his calling, he should have been a Dr, or a Preacher or Counselor. Complete strangers would come up to him and pour out their life stories and problems to him. He's been gone three years now and people still stop me when I'm out to talk to me about my husband. Recently a gentleman I never met recognized my son while we were out shopping, he wanted to tell me that he knew my husband and that he was a "good one." I didn't take it as a slight, I knew that he didn't mean he was a "good black man". I knew he he just meant that he was a good man.

Sometimes I think we can be hypersensitive to what we've been taught to expect from a society as people who have found love outside of our own ethnicities. I know I have. I would even go so far as to conduct little social experiments. I remember one time, I had bought my husband a rather expensive coat. He needed to take it back to be repaired but we didn't have the receipt. He took the coat in, he was dressed in jeans tee shirt and ball cap and the clerk wouldn't give him the time of day. He came home complaining to me about it. My advice to him was, put on your suit and tie, take the ball cap off your head and go back. They took the coat back and gave him a new one and he had just wanted the zipper repaired in the lining. Another time, he practically dragged me out of a store when I confronted a clerk that had asked him for ID when using his credit card, when she had not asked the white person in front of us. His reaction to that incident had me asking other questions about his life experience and whether he had been programmed to accept those injustices or if he was just a more tolerant person than me. I still haven't decided to this day if I was wrong for calling that clerk out.

We're lucky in a lot of ways, my son and I have good friends and neighbors. We live in a community that is diverse has people across the full spectrum of ethnicities. These days, I try to spend my time raising my son to be a good human being. He's not deprived of anything.. he's not angry. We talk often about how horrible people can be to one another and why people have to categorize themselves and create divisions between races. We talk about how afraid people are of others that appear different. We talk about fear and how if we let it, it can control our lives. It turns us ugly and we say and do hurtful things. It's a human thing, so we have to be careful. I remember my husband's Aunt Clara, she used to say "baby, you gotta feed em with a long handled spoon," it was in reference to placing to much trust in others. He's a smart kid, he has his fathers charm. I'm confident he'll grow to be come a "good one" too.

[Skidmore]

6. You've been lucky in many ways, as have I.

I agree with you about not being confrontational because people can be redirected without being surly with them. I know that so much of what people do that is ugly comes from fear--fear of the unknown, fear of having something taken from them, fear of insecurity, fear of being burned one more time. My husband and I have had many long discussions about this and have always come to the conclusion that the one way we can make a difference is to put ourselves out there and teach people how to interact with those not like themselves through example.

I have to chuckle at times with the grandbabies though. My daughter has 3 little ones and the baby just adores her "gampa." They live in the Chicago suburbs so we don't get to see them often. There has been more than once that the baby has seen an older black male from behind and tugged his pant leg, excitedly calling "Gampa, gampa." My daughter will just politely smile to the confused fellow and explain that this little towheaded baby mistook him for her grandfather. Another level of confused, but one I wish didn't exist.