I’ve never felt my son’s blackness like I did today.
School organized mother’s day luncheon. Posh country club. Manicured lawn. Bleached-blonde women in derby hats dabbing at make-up with pressed white napkins. Moms and boys. Boys and moms. Boys with bangs that blow in the wind. Slouching. Straightening. Adjusting ill-fitting sports coats.
And I wanted to vomit. I wanted to leave, make a break for it, sneak out the back gate. I was broken open on the spot, staring around at everything going on as if in slow motion. Sitting next to the son I have loved with all my heart for the past 12 years and knowing that he did not fit in…in that place where I, so obviously, did. And it hit me like a kick-in-the-shins-doubled-over-holy-shit-wtf load of bricks.
And in that moment, there was no way in hell you were gonna put this white mom on stage next to her black adopted son while he reads a letter to her in the microphone and have everyone whisper, ‘uh, how beautiful’ as if saying those words somehow solves racism for them. As if you have no prejudice or don’t exist in a system of whiteness because you said that. As if I don’t because I’m the one standing next to him or kissing his forehead at night.
As if you/I/we wouldn’t clap for him on stage getting an athletic award and clutch our purses tightly passing him on the street later that same night.
And I froze in that. I don’t know anything about what it feels like to be black. I hear it come out of my kid. I see it in the way he experiences situations like today. Even a black kid being raised in a white community. Or even more so because of that. And I see these weird things in the faces of these women when they look at him, when they look at us. And I feel that it’s my fault. That, on some level, I brought this on him. That I’ve created a space for him that stirs up more issues than it solves. All white, upper class christian school where my kid has no choice but to stand out because of his race; where my kid has no choice but to feel like he has to prove himself as more than just another black kid who can play football. And that’s not even going anywhere on the ‘transracial, international adoption’ front. That’s an additional can of whoop ass I’m barely even touching on here. And this isn’t a pity party, tell me it’s not my fault type of thing. This is a slap in my own face to wake up. Awaken to the things I exist in.
I leaned over to him while the boy before us finished his love letter to his mom and said, ‘Perez, we can leave. Can we leave? I want to leave.’ And he leaned into me (knowing full well the power and reason behind my words) with, ‘Mom, it’s ok. I know how to do this. I’ve been doing this for like, ever…and, also, these are my friends, remember?’