Like all parents, before my baby was born, I wondered what she would look like -- imagined it, fantasized about it, allowed myself to get lost in reveries of little fingers and toes and eyes and nose, amazed that my growing stomach would actually turn into a human child. (Who could have thought up a more bizarre science fiction concept?) I wondered if she would look like me or her dad or one of her grandparents or aunts or uncles or like none of us. And I certainly wondered, often aloud with Mohan, what skin color she might have and how we and others would respond to and treat her depending on her lightness, darkness or in-between-ness.
What I don't think I ever imagined, however, was that my child would end up with blue eyes! Leave it to the universe to not only constantly surprise me, but to sock it to me with challenges I never would have thought to consider.
Most of you reading this blog have met Mallika in person and you know that her eyes are indeed very striking. When she looks at you, there is an engagement and a focus that's hard to deny, and many people point to the color of her eyes as the source of this power. They are striking, they are beautiful, and they add a whole different dimension to her being a mixed-race girl and my parenting of her that strives to be anti-racist.
It's just a little bit, or a lot bit, of a conundrum. With friends, particularly ones whose politics I share, it's pretty comfortable to just say yes, her eyes are beautiful, and isn't it funny they came out blue? But even so, I am often aware, especially when there are other children around, that other kids don't frequently receive the kind of complimentary attention Mallika does. Even if they don't have beautiful eyes, sometimes their hair is gorgeous or their smile is shining or their laugh infectious... And sometimes their eyes are beautiful. But brown. It's just a delicate -- not fragile, but delicate -- balance to maintain in which I honestly recognize a beautiful feature of my daughter and don't deny or minimize it while also striving to honor, comment on, and draw attention to the wonderful physical attributes of other kids. And the physicality IS important, especially when it comes to race. Racialized features + young girls = a potent mix. Sure, I also make it a point to do a lot of positive reinforcement with kids of things like skills, abilities, behavior, character. But how you look DOES matter and matters a lot, and I feel it's important for me to do what I can to help create a context for kids that doesn't ignore that social reality. And it's also important to me to valorize physical features that aren't associated with whiteness.
The moments that are viscerally uncomfortable, however, more often are with strangers, but perhaps I'll write about that on a different day. There's weird crap that comes out when people interact with kids, and people's interactions with my kid are no exception.
On a related note, I have to say I really like how Mohan has handled this eye color thing. Many women in similar situations have had their husbands/partners question who the baby's father is and/or left them high and dry to raise the baby on their own. Thank god I never even had to worry about that. I have actually learned a lot about how to handle the blue-eyed thing from Mohan's good-humored approach. In response to people saying things like, "Where did she get those eyes?!?", he's said things like, "Oh, probably some Portuguese hanky-panky with the Tamils back when they colonized Sri Lanka." (16th century, before the Dutch, before the British.) Or even just, "Hey, it's just a great irony of life and my anti-racist politics to have a blue-eyed Tamil daughter!"
I don't know if it was my intelligence, my intuition, or my good fortune to have chosen such a great husband. Or maybe I just fell in love with his eyes.
Peace,
Briana
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