Whitney, Trayvon & Me. Or, Why Beyonce Makes Me Cry.

I can't watch Beyonce without crying, especially if my daughter is sitting on my lap at the same time.  Baby Girl caught me crying at the video for "If I Was A Boy" just this morning.  I tried to hide my tears from her, and I tell myself she's too young to be traumatized by seeing her mother cry. But she did look baffled. Hell, I'm baffled. 

I'm not ashamed to be impressed by Beyonce's talent- she opens her stunning mouth and her golden soul pours out, but I'm baffled that she makes me cry every single ding dong time I hear her sing.  I even sobbed at her Superbowl half-time performance, which was stupendous and kinda goofy at the same time.  I don't own any of her albums. 

Well, that's a lie. 

I own one. 

And a half. 

Maybe 2. 

And admitting that is painful for a self proclaimed music snob.

I can and do listen to Ann Peebles, Sharon Jones, Aretha, Ella, Billie, Nina Simone, Azalea, Santigold and Gladys Knight without busting into tears.  It's singly a Beyonce-induced crying jag. Each time I leak this salt water of self-embarrassed out of my eyes I'm holding my tiny black baby daughter, so that must have something to do with it.

Our baby was born on February 8, 2012. The precise text my baby mama texted to me after she was born was "She so white".  And Baby Girl really was quite white for a fully black baby.  I even sent photos to family members back home and a niece and a nephew both replied, "I thought she was supposed to be black." They sounded disappointed, not that this needs pointing out, but... I am aware that even writing about race is a tricky thorny deal.

 As Baby Girl began 'browning up', as her birth grandma said she would, I held a secret fear deep inside me that I was terrified to utter, and still haven't said aloud.  I was afraid of my child becoming too dark, and wondered if it was because I was secretly racist. But the more I thought about it, I feared (and still do) that the darker she is the more people will prejudge her. And by prejudge, I mean be prejudiced.  Hell, even some black people are prejudiced against their darkest brethren.  While we were waiting in the hospital for Baby Girl, our birth grandmother told us all about how her own family held her apart since she was darker than anyone else. 

Read "Outliers" if you think I'm a clueless white racist about this. Malcolm Gladwell writes about his own mother's personal success being partially due to the lightness of her black skin.

The oddest thing is, I forget my daughter is black until I see another white person holding her.  Which is a lot...

I wish I had a 401K for every woman who, upon seeing my baby, lowers her voice, grabs my forearm conspiratorially, and almost whispers, "I always wanted a black baby."

My inner smart-ass wants to say, "Well, I had no choice, because none of the white baby mommas would have me." But the truth is, we went to the transracial parenting workshop, we got scared by what could happen, we endlessly discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that we just didn't care what color our child was going to be. 

And to be even more scarily honest, when Baby Mama and I first spoke she asked me if my husband would be okay with a black baby. She didn't worry about me, but she was worried what he'd think.  If he would love the baby enough.  And I don't even really know how to comment about that. It made me sad that she asked. Sad for us all. I wanted in that moment to be able to push some magic button so all people would never even have to think, much less say something like that to other people.

In fact, to fully fall on my knee jerk liberal knees, it took me a lot of practice to even say "black" as opposed to "African-American".  But my beloved baby-gramma corrected my even more knee jerk liberal mother in the hospital waiting room. My mother was taking elaborate pains to say "African-American",  when baby-gramma said, "You don't have to call me that.  I'm not from Africa, I'm from Louisiana. I'm black."

That led to a thick little pause as my sister, my husband, my mother and I all adjusted our progressive radars and silently thanked baby-gramma for sanctioning the use of the great shortcut word "black."  After all, we call ourselves 'white", not "Caucasian", or "Irish--Catholic-German-Jews"- unless we are drinking and/or joking or in therapy.

By the time we were able to leave the hospital with our three day old baby, Whitney Houston drowned in a bathtub in Beverly Hills and the world mourned (and judged).  Whitney and I were the same age when she died and I became a mother. 

We spent another week in Akron, waiting for the adoption papers to fly from Ohio to California, get signed, approved and fly back, before they'd let us leave the state, and all we could really do with a tiny baby in February was stay inside and watch TV, which was bursting to share with us the senseless details of Whitney's tragic succumbing to her prescription and top shelf demons. 

For those of you who only know Whitney from her manic and messy Bobby Brown years, fact is- Whitney was the Beyonce of the 80s- she was as physically perfect as she was talented. Whitney's voice held her soul and maybe that's why she died young, sad and empty- she sang her soul right out of her body.  Once your soul is gone, you become an addict or nobody or Donald Trump.

I can't say that I took Whitney's death terribly personally but whenever I heard a snippet of "And I Will Always Love You" I would tear up despite myself, because it might be a seriously overcooked and chewy love song  (and I seriously prefer Dolly Parton's version) but I was falling in love with my baby and that's the kind of song you find yourself singing at 4am to a bald 6 pound being peering up at you with deep dark eyes full of pre-verbal soul.

A few weeks later we had Baby Girl home with us in Los Angeles when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.  I was beyond devastated by his murder. I took it so personally that even I knew it didn't make sense to me. Then I blurted out to my sister what I didn't even know what I was thinking/feeling-  "If we took home a baby boy instead of a girl I'd be terrified every day he went outside just to do anything."  I felt racist for even thinking this but it's true. I'm simultaneously thankful and heartbroken I have a girl because she has a better chance of making it to college. Alive. 

Oh, and I'm very white- translucently so, and as I age my hands are quickly resembling Vietnamese spring rolls- you can easily see my veins and bones through my rice paper skin.  And I love right now in my life and my baby's life because she has no idea we are different colors. She screams with joy when I come home and we cuddle in front of the mirror in her room. She loves looking at us in the mirror, and I can see that she sees no difference between us.  And I treasure this ignorance because I know it will change, forever. Some day soon.

I know the day will come when someone else informs her that she is different than me in ways that mean absolutely nothing and absolutely everything.  And we will have conversations about it, probably more than a few, and my job will be to make sure she understands that even though our skins are different, it's what lurks beneath that really matters.  But as she grows and learns and is categorized, she will have to learn this for herself over and over and over. And she will have to be tougher and braver and wiser and forgiving because of it.

And I will have to let it happen since it's her life, and not mine. And I will never ever know how it truly feels to be her.  But I am lucky enough to know her soul and I will protect and nurture that soul so that she can share it with the world, like Beyonce, without the fear of it ever running on empty.