When ! was growing up, I constantly imagined what my life and family would look like-be like. I wanted the perfect life with happiness and health and joy. I wanted everything different than what my real life was.
For fun, my best friend Mary and I would sit down, hip to hip, in a cozy chair with a Sears Catalog and circle the woman we would be, the man who would fill the role as our husband, and the kids we would have. “I’m her,” she’d say and I’d search for my girl and say, “I’m her!” She always picked the blonde and blue eyed people and naturally I’d choose brunettes assuming my entire family would look just like me but prettier.
Today, my family looks nothing like the Sears catalog models. My husband is African-American, and I have two daughters from his previous marriage that are quite darker than my skin and my two girls that I gave birth to look much different than each other. Were a rainbow of darker brown to lighter cream or as Sienna, my second youngest say’s, “peachy.”
With this being said,
18 years into being a mother, my life and family look nothing like what I circled. From the way we look to the way to the way we are.
As a little girl, my future was a mirage of what I had seen and been exposed to. We all have absorbed images of what we should look like and how we should turn out. Nothing in my childhood led me to where I am today. It has only been my exposure and God appointed interactions with experiences and people outside of what my norm was that led me to who I am. My husband see my as fire and ice, sometimes loving and sometimes annoying. I see him as my protector and love even though at times he completely pisses me off. What we don’t see anymore is the difference in our skin, simply our epidermis. Our ways are extremely different for many reasons (where we’re from, how we grew up, our hobbies, and more). What is the same is our love. Love is no color and it is every color. Our family is all the colors and we are love.
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