Mommypants Moment – Mango
by Cheryl, posted on April 11th, 2011 in Mommypants Moment
Today’s Mommypants moment is from Dana, better known as The Kitchen Witch, and, affectionally, as Kitch. She posts a lot of recipes and her stories that go along with them are in turn hilarious and poignant. Sometimes both. This piece is especially close to my heart.
There are some women on this planet who really love being pregnant. They tote their plump bellies around with pride. They feel energetic, beautiful, full of purpose.
I am not one of those women.
I was a card-carrying member of The Grouch Club. However, there was one thing about pregnancy I absolutely adored. For 8 months, my husband and I played an engrossing and amusing game: Spin the Genetic Wheel.
We would cuddle in bed, bodies entwined, and lose ourselves in speculation. “What will our baby look like, do you think? Will s/he have my blue eyes? Your elegant hands?”
The possibilities were fascinating, because appearance-wise, Husband and I are polar opposites. He is dark-skinned, with the trademark Indian black curls, broad-shouldered, impossibly tall. I am bird-boned, textbook blond.
We affectionately began referring to our growing child as “Oreo Baby,” and although it horrified some people, to us it meant a coming together – a celebration of yin and yang – and mixing is beautiful.
And she was. Our daughter was beautiful.
***
The first time it happened, I was at the grocery store. Miss D. was in her baby carrier, fast asleep, and I scanned the produce aisle, depressed by winter fruit. Winter fruit sucks.
A woman in a heavy parka, green bananas in hand, stopped and peered into the baby carrier. “Oh my Lord!” she exclaimed breathily. “What an absolute doll-baby! She’s so beautiful! What country did you get her from?”
And then came the others:
The young mother, pushing her Shanghai baby in the bucket swing at the park. “Oh, you adopted from overseas, too?”
The neighbor. “Wow, she’s a dark one.”
The man at the party, on his third Johnnie Walker Black. “Well there, Blondie, your DNA sure didn’t translate, did it?”
I began carrying Miss D. around with defensive outrage, clutching her possessively to my chest, bitter as an unripe mango.
My friends tried to be helpful.
“I really think she has the shape of your eyes,” Adrienne said.
“No question, she has your nose,” said Bette.
“I got a nose job in the 10th grade,” I reminded her.
“She’s got your butt,” my mother said proudly.
In small moments, I would catch myself peering at her tiny face, searching for something, a little flicker, a scrap of something I recognized. I had to be in there somewhere, right? A small pebble of me? Even if nobody else could see it, I was in there.
Right?
***
I look back on those early months and feel a deep sense of shame. I’d wished for a beautiful, healthy child, and God had answered.
Why did I obsess over the details, let the offhand remarks of strangers cut into my flesh? What kind of vanity is it that makes us want to see ourselves, even the smallest pinch, staring back at us in the face of our offspring?
How many hours did I waste studying her, hoping for a reflection?
Who cared what others said?
My daughter was beautiful.
***
Miss D. – carefree and boisterous and thrilled-to-be-alive Miss D. – now age four, launches her small body at me, full-throttle.
“Mommy! You came to pick me up early!”
“Yep. Even Summer Camp can’t get you out of going to the dentist. Can you go get your backpack?”
She scampers away, and I feel a tug on my skirt. A small, tow-headed little girl with braids studies me.
“You’re D____’s mommy?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Oh. Is she adopted?”
Immediately, I rubberneck around the room, searching for Miss D., hoping that she’s out of earshot. She is.
But I heard. Believe me, I heard.
Even though the remark comes without a hint of malice – just childhood curiosity – my hackles rise. I am suddenly shimmering with fury.
I narrow my eyelids, shake my head her, and hiss, “No. She is not adopted.”
Big-eyed, the child recoils and I turn my back on her.
I turn to my beautiful daughter who has not heard a thing. Who is far too young to wrestle with such a thing.
***
Miss D., now in first grade, is stone-cold jazzed to ride the bus to school. Once again, I smile, shake my head, and wonder if she’s from Mars. I never wanted to ride the bus. I feared the bus. Nothing good happens on the bus.
I offer to drive her, but Miss D. insists. She is bus-bound and hot-Dang-y’all! excited. I walk her to the bus stop, and when the yellow doors open, she gallops through, without a glance back. I am shattered and wildly proud at the same time.
Two weeks later, Miss D. arrives home from the bus stop, cheeks wet with tears.
“I wanted to sit by J_______ on the way home but he wouldn’t let me. I asked if he would sit with me and he said, ‘Take your camel butt and sit it somewhere else.’”
My eyes turn to blur and I crouch down to look at my beautiful daughter. My beautiful brown daughter. I open my mouth; no words come out. Only the taste of mango, acrid and sharp.
Tags: dana, kitchen witch, mixed-race children, mommypants moment, so not adopted
One of my best friends is living in China, and her daughter looks so much like her husband (half Chinese, half Polynesian). She gets adoption questions all the time. Another good friend is a tiny strawberry blonde, married to our Indian friend, and already preparing herself to get those looks and comments.
Joanna Says:
GRAMPS Says:
TheKitchenWitch Reply:
April 11th, 2011 at 9:51 am
So mean and so young. I think that’s what blew me away most of all.
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