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Black on the Inside

fall2008_ford

By Dionne Ford My daughter has decided that she is white. With her butterscotch skin and thick copper-colored curls, it’s easy to see that white is only half the story. Her father is white, with his Irish grandmother’s freckled skin and red hair and his Finnish grandfather’s long limbs and blue eyes. I am black, cocoa-colored like my grandmothers from Arkansas and Mississippi. I want Desiree, as a biracial child, to self-identify, to not let others box her into some container too small to hold all of her. I just never considered that she might not identify with me at all. I liked it better when she worked in tones. When she was four and heading off to preschool, she compared us to the colors in her crayon box. She was peach, Dad was pink, and I was brown. The kids in her school were an amalgam of different colors, races, and religions, with parents of varying sexual orientations, and Read more …

Talking Smack

spring2009_bailey

By Johanna Bailey “Let’s leave the kids at home and meet up for a drink sometime!” Every time I join a new playgroup, there’s always at least one person who suggests a girls’ night out. I’m never sure exactly how to respond. Do I say that alcohol gives me a headache? That I’m on medication and can’t drink? That I’m allergic? Or do I say nothing at all and just hope that they won’t notice when I order orange juice at the bar? The truth is, I’m an alcoholic and heroin addict in recovery. Eight years into my sobriety, it doesn’t get any easier to say that out loud. Even more troubling is what—if anything—I say to my son, Nico, and when. He’s only three. When he asks why I don’t drink wine like daddy, I explain to him I don’t like the taste, just like he doesn’t like the taste of corn. And that’s all the explanation he needs. Read more …

Moment of Recognition

summer2008_SCHWEIKERT

By Suzi Schweikert Boarding an evening flight home from a medical conference, I shuffle along in an interminable line that winds its way to the back of the plane. My thoughts of home are interrupted by a man who is seated and facing me. His manner isn’t flirtatious, but we make prolonged eye contact. Or rather, he does. While he stares, I glance at the back of someone’s head, down at my boarding pass, back up at the seat numbers. At last I arrive at my row, a few behind the man in question, and settle in with a magazine. That might have been the end of it. The moment our plane lands, though, I become aware of him again. He’s standing, hunched over, his head at a tilt between the chair back and overhead bins. He eagerly waves at me. “Hey!” he shouts over the rumbling plane engines. “Did you deliver my baby?” Heads spin around on both aisles Read more …

The Fur Berry Dilemma

spring2010_strong

By Lara Strong In Hungary, where I have lived for ten years, most schools operate with tight budgets. As a result, there aren’t a lot of toys or books in the classrooms for kids to play with or look through during breaks. In the States, the “bring-your-own lunch” concept exists; in Hungary, kids are allowed—in fact, encouraged—to bring in their own toys. This has never caused much of a problem. My eight-year-old son has always relished the morning ritual of choosing which toy to bring in: Should it be a Lego dinosaur? How about Playmobil pirates or some tiny, plastic animal figures? Now that my six-year-old daughter, Sara, is entering first grade, she is already eagerly anticipating this practice—a stuffed unicorn, perhaps? Maybe a pretty pink pony? I’ve rarely had an opportunity to witness what happens when my kids actually arrive at school, but I imagine how it goes each morning. They set down their backpacks, take off their jackets, Read more …