There’s no place like home

As arrival moments go in a person’s life, being invited to post here on Mothers of Hue feels like handing over my well traveled passport to the slightly skeptical custom’s officer of a country that I had been learning about for years, but had no idea how to get to until now. I can hear myself saying to her as she looks over my paperwork; The travel voucher arrived in my hands the moment I clicked my heels together three times and said; “There’s no place like home”. I start humming Ease on Down, in case she still seems uncertain of my credentials.  When she asks me what I mean by home, I will tell her that home is a place where what it means to be a mother is reflected in the values of the other mothers around me. Then I will show her a picture of my beautiful boys and pray she reaches for that enter-on-in stamp.  My boys have that effect on people.

Ok, enough of the long winded preface. We know that I am not of hue on the outside. My honorary hue status begins with my motherhood. I am the adoptive mother of an African American son, adopted at birth, and the biological mother of a biracial son. It is not the fact of my mothering these boys that makes me of hue, it is the act of mothering these boys with intention in as many areas as I can sort out on a given day that has brought me here.  From hair care trial and error (who knew the spray bottle would be such a hit?) to handing a pile of all brown-skinned-characters-on-the pages-picture-books to the preschool teacher explaining as firmly and diplomatically as I can that this should be a good start. A good start when it comes to making certain that my son sees himself in the pages of at least one book they read at circle time every day. It is these experiences that I look forward to writing about, and creating dialogue and seeking help about.

Raising a child of a different race is the most life changing event for me— In my estimation it eclipses being a parent period. The two are related, but at the same time my racial consciousness is OMNI present, and demanding of constant tending to in the outside world as well as my private home world. Whereas my parenting for parenting sake is something I tend to daily, or minute by minute in cases, but I do not need to be as hyper-vigilant about it.

In my case, I think about my sons at 15, 18, 21 etc. as my marker for what I need to work on next. I mean I want them to travel the world with internal strength and confidence as black men, as an adoptee in Sam’s case, as men, and as men raised by a white woman and her extended family… I can’t expect them to just wake up to those things because they are black/biracial as teens. That would be like raising me on a deserted island, bringing me to civilization at fifteen, and saying; “Off you go then. Thrive. What? Aren’t your coping skills genetic?” That image keeps me in line. Is it too extreme? I don’t think so. Do you?