Oh no, what if it gets my nose and that's IT?!

The latest weird thing I've been thinking about is this: when I have a baby, he or she is most definitely not going to look like me.

Okay, wait. The thought process doesn't start out that way. It's more like when I think about having a baby, I picture a white baby. More specifically, I picture a baby who looks like my baby pictures. (Which are WAY adorable I'll have you know.) Pale skin, dark hair, light eyes.

I have to physically re-think and re-picture my baby as some mixture of half German-Italian-Eastern-European-Peasant-Jew and half Chinese. I can barely picture this baby even though I am completely obsessed with all the half-Caucasian half-Asian babies at church. You'd think that I'd be, oh, I don't know, used to the idea by now. But I don't picture a white baby on purpose. It's a reflex. I think I just naturally assume I'll have a baby that looks like me.

Will it look anything like me? A friend of mine says her half-white half-Chinese niece doesn't look Asian at all, but who knows what our genes will mix up? I have to say that most of the mixed babies I see definitely look more like their Asian parent, but maybe I see that because I'm not Asian. Don't get all het up about me not wanting an Asian-looking baby either because that's so not it. I've just always wondered what physical traits I would pass on to my kids. I'm surprised that I seem to automatically be conjuring up the white baby. (Which is a recent thing, actually. When I first started to think about kids with Phillip I was pretty thrilled because EVERYONE knows that mixed babies are the CUTEST. And you cannot argue with me on that point. Well, except for this kid. He's pretty cute.) Are Phillip and I so radically different looking that our kid won't look like either of us? Will other people see our family walking around town and wonder where that interracial couple got those Hispanic kids? Will people see me out with my child and wonder if she's adopted?  Would I be thinking this if I were married to a white man?

And adoption... I am very hopeful that one day we can go adopt all the babies from the Hepzihbah orphanage in Xi'an. Well, maybe not all of them. But with that hope in mind, there's a very good chance that I will look like a foreigner in my own family. I've thought about the picture my parents will want of all their grandchildren and time will tell, but mine might look pretty different. My kids will be minorities and I will have no idea what to tell them about that because I am not. I HAVE thought of some woman at the grocery store coming up to me to ask where my kid is from.

I think I'm okay with that. What am I saying. I am VERY okay with that- as far as I can wrap my mind around it right now. I write all this more as a "hey, isn't this funny?" anecdote than anything else. I am truly surprised at myself for conjuring a white baby every time. I just don't know what it says about my subconcious. I have a feeling that when I have my baby this will all probably be moot- because my baby will be my baby.

So yeah. This could be the first post that gets me hate mail- were I so popular as to receive any mail at all! There are a million disclaimers I should write, but I'm not going to. Except to say that I think I am the spitting image of my dad and all my mom deigned to pass on was stick straight hair.

Comments

[Aunt Roseann]

Dear Maggie,

You are much better looking than your dad. I have always thought and been thankful for the fact that all of you "kids" take after your mom's side of the family.

love,
Aunt Roseann