This First Person column is the experience of Jen Watt, who lives in Guelph, Ont. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
My four-year-old rejected the offered ride in the grocery cart child seat and declared: “I’m a bid-dirl (big girl) now!”
She tucked herself between me and the cart by standing on the lower tray and gripping the handlebar between my hands. Snuggling in and giggling, she soothed my resistance to the cumbersome manoeuvre and enticed me to relish the moment.
Zigzagging our cart to stop in front of the Gala apples and navel oranges, I noticed a man peering at us from the next produce aisle. I felt uneasy and could tell he was watching us.
We stopped for bell peppers while Nomi named the colours — “yellow, orange, red.” We were interrupted by a question. “Is this your daughter?”
The man I had spotted earlier stood an arm’s length two feet away and pointed at my child. I pulled the cart and Nomi toward me. Dread washed over me as I dipped my face to touch my daughter’s hair. I steeled myself to answer him: “Yes, she is my daughter.”
He retorted, shaking his finger and head: “But she doesn’t look like you.”
His disbelief enraged me but I kept my face wooden. It wasn’t the first time strangers — both Asian like myself and others — have reacted similarly. One stranger asked my white mother-in-law if I was my child’s mother and incredulously asked me in Mandarin if I was the nanny.
They saw my biracial child’s auburn hair, rosy porcelain skin and chiselled chin and likely didn’t think she could be related to the affectionate Chinese woman with jet-black hair, umber skin and round face.
I walked away but answered him anyway: “Her dad is a tall white guy.”
I fled toward the bread section. Thankfully, he did not follow us. My dread disappeared and regret stepped in with nausea as I realized I didn’t need to defend my daughter’s parentage or our relationship.
As we passed through the chill of the meat section, Nomi asked me: “Mama, why did the man say that?”
“Well, I don’t know, sweetie,” I said, hesitating. “I guess he wanted to tell us we don’t look alike.” I couldn’t say what I speculated: He probably doesn’t think you’re my child.
Being a mom is an important part of my identity and creating safe and positive experiences for my children is of paramount importance to me. As a mother, I have a reasonable right to the timing of when my child is exposed and taught hard truths — telling a young child she doesn’t look like her mother can be earth-shattering.
Even though Nomi would eventually learn about racial identity, the man’s intrusive question propelled us to a conversation that I felt she wasn’t ready for. I should have walked away when I suspected the man was following us or at least when he first asked the question. I owed him no answer and it was none of his business.
I would have been open to a “May I ask you a question?” This would have at least offered me a choice to answer or leave, because I enjoy complex conversation topics when I choose to engage.
But a grocery shopping trip with my four-year-old was neither the place nor the time to engage in such a complex topic and, as a result of that exchange, I saw how fissures in my child’s sense of belonging to her mama showed up in other ways.
One day, after a bath, Nomi perched on the stool. She looked in the mirror as I opened the drawer and grabbed the grey blow-dryer. When I reached over the sink for the plug, Nomi said: “Mama, no blow-dryer.”
She hadn’t minded the blow-dryer previously, so I asked: “Aw, is it too loud?”
She shook her head. I asked: “Too hot?”
She shook her head, no, and scrunched her face. I held the plug in my right hand and waited for her answer.
She looked away and whispered: “Wet hair’s like Mama’s.”
I knew she was telling me something important, but I didn’t understand how blow-drying her hair was connected to looking like me. I searched her face for the answer until it clicked.
I said: “Oh, do you mean when your hair is wet it’s darker?”
She opened her eyes and nodded yes.
A pang of emotion hit my chest. I saw how she was looking in the mirror, her eyes darting between us. I wanted to burst into tears and make this pain go away for both of us. So I started naming extended family members with light hair colour.
I realized she was still processing the man’s words. I emphasized facts from my adult perspective — that she is my daughter even if we don’t look alike. I missed the point that these truths didn’t override the confusion she felt. I eventually realized lavishing praises about her beautiful auburn hair and emphasizing similarities with other people dismissed what she experienced.
I realized the stranger in the grocery store had encroached on my four-year-old’s world and introduced a catastrophic possibility — that her Mama wasn’t hers. She needed my help processing this devastation. My positivity conveyed that Mama didn’t understand — that she had to figure out how we belonged to each other on her own.
Over time, I shifted my focus and let her feel the sadness. I acknowledged our other differences, and she has come to embrace what I always hoped for her to know: That we are connected even if we don’t look alike.
A decade has passed and I find myself colouring my hair with auburn highlights. I laugh that I have unconsciously tried to match Nomi’s hair colour.
Strangers continue to approach us at grocery stores, asking about our relationship. It can feel like we need to defend it. Nomi and I have practised walking away, but it hasn’t eradicated the impact of assumptions about us. Talking about culture and racialized identities has become a normal part of our family’s conversations.
We also lament the fact that some people are uncomfortable with topics that are central to our identity and experiences. So we keep learning skills to engage in these complex topics with people willing to have the conversations.
Even though I wish the grocery store encounter happened differently, today, we accept it as a point of origin for my daughter and me on identity, belonging and grief — topics beneath the colours of our skin and hair.
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