![]() ![]() ![]() What if we are blessed with a boy next time? I had to admit that I’m afraid to bring a beautiful black boy into the world we’re living in now. Recently though, when every morning we wake up to more heartbreaking news and more jarring examples of racism in our country, I had to confess to Sam that I’m nervous. I love being a girl mom (and Sam loves being a #GirlDad), but we also long for a baby boy. We aren’t ready to start trying again yet, but we’ve been talking about it a lot lately. As difficult as it is to have three little kids to mother, my heart aches for another baby to hold. She spends all of her waking hours chasing her big sisters and yelling for more food. She’s 15 months old - not a baby anymore, but also not quite a toddler. And those two words, whispered without thinking, have colored our relationship ever since.Įlla, my baby girl, is walking now. But that memory is the only thing I can remember from that trip. This was the first time anyone so close to me had ever said or done anything like that. But mostly because, at the time, I didn’t know what to say. Partly because I didn’t want her to be embarrassed. Partly because I’m extremely non-confrontational. Offended that men with skin the same color as mine seemed scary, but the many groups of white men we encountered that weekend didn’t elicit the same response. Did she forget, after so many years of friendship, that I was black too? I was shocked that these men, who were probably paying us zero attention, made her nervous when she had been around the black men in my family and in our friend circle a thousand times. This girl who once yelled at a boy at tennis camp for teasing me about my big lips and making me cry. It took me a while to unpack how I felt in that moment, but mostly I was shocked. As soon as she spotted them, she whispered “black guys! black guys!” grabbed one of the other girls by the hand and rushed our group across the street to our hotel before they could get too close. But my friend made it clear that she didn’t want to find out. Maybe they were looking for a group of women to party with. Maybe they were also shopping or headed to a pool party. I don’t remember much about them, only that they were walking down the strip just like us. We were on the sidewalk, headed back to our hotel, and a small group of black men were headed towards us. It was the middle of the day and we had been out shopping. If my memory serves me right, I was the only black girl in the group. I was walking down the strip with one of my oldest friends and a couple of other girls. I can hardly remember any details from the trip (why we were there, who all was in the group), but I do have one vivid memory. Back in my pre-mom days, I used to go on girls’ trips pretty often. ![]()
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