Posts

Showing posts from May, 2020

Dandelion baby: My Mother's Day Reflection

Image
I was standing in a long, long line at the airport, on the way to a girls' trip to Prague, when my former roommate Gretchen noticed a family of dandelion-haired little girls a few serpentines ahead of us. "That's what your kids will look like," she said. That's certainly how I looked as a kid--white-blonde hair in all directions--but that's not how my kids would look. I was dating my future fiance, my future husband, my future baby-daddy at the time, and Krystian is Puerto Rican, with thick, black wavy hair. "Is it racist," I asked Gretchen as the line dragged on, "that I'm a little sad that my kids won't look just like me?" Five years later, and I have a non-theoretical daughter, who doesn't look just like me (and, for that matter, doesn't look exactly like Krystian, either) and I'm extremely grateful for it. There's nothing wrong with little blondies, but let me explain why having a daughter who doesn't loo