Imagine this, it’s been about 20 minutes since school has let out and my daughter is playing on the monkey bars with some friends as I watch.  There are four of them.  A man approaches and with a friendly gesture says, “is that one yours?” pointing to the blonde boy not playing with my daughter.

“No, that one is,” I say, pointing to my brown-skinned girl as she gracefully skips bars showing off her skills.

“Oh,” he says.  “That could have been me.  I pretty much only dated black women my whole life.  I’m from Pasedena.  I’m not sure how I ended up with a white woman, but I did.”  He then proceeds to explain in full detail about how he met his wife.

Meanwhile I am drowning out his nostalgia with my own thoughts, as I pause to remember this You Tube video I saw a few months before where this woman preaches her ideas of traditional marriage, breaking up couples that don’t exemplify her idea of a “straight marriage”. She includes inter-racial couples and there is this scene where she says it “bothers” her to think about the inter-racial couple having, as she gestures with her hands, implying sex.

For some reason his comment sort of brought me to this place of remembering the woman’s gestures. How is he seeing me right now as he babbles on about nothing really? Why do I remind him of the fact that he doesn’t have inter-racial children? When he looks at me, and my inter-racial family, is he immediately reminded of sex?  I know that children are, on some level, living reminders that couples have sex.  Do you suppose that inter-racial families serve as an even greater reminder that couples have sex, and that people go there in their minds, imagining us doing it?? Well, I suppose they do. So I am happy to report that yes it is true, we are happily married and have sex. We have even made babies… twice.
Imagine that?