My mother’s mother was a first generation Mexican American, while her father was Caucasian; blonde hair and blue eyes. Her father passed away in a car wreck when she was 12 and she was then raised by his parents, my great grandmother and paw paw. Throughout her adolescence she experienced quite a bit of adversity, particularly when she began to date my African American father. Even as a kid, her grandparents would never forget to remind my mom how proud they’d be of her if she could just “bring a nice white boy home”. But my mother, being a woman interested in pleasing no one other than herself, did what she wanted to do and loved who she wanted to love.
As my parents’ love grew and they decided to get married, my mother asked my paw paw to walk her down the aisle, seeing as her own father couldn’t. His reply? “I wouldn’t even drive down the same street the church is on.” All because he was so displeased with her choosing to marry a black man. Nonetheless, she married who she wanted. There were even comments in the delivery room after I was born where family questioned whether or not my father was indeed mine, since I was born with such fair skin. Fortunately growing up, my sister and I were never mistreated by them or experienced direct prejudice that we were aware of. It made for an enjoyable and diverse childhood.
My pawpaw passed away before I was a teenager, but my great-grandmother outlived him over a decade. Sadly, she spent that last decade with Alzheimer’s and a disintegrating memory that left her dependent on my Mexican grandmother for full-time care. It was difficult to watch her become more and more childlike, but very eye opening.
I vividly remember my last visit with her. I walked into her house and leaned over to kiss her cheek while asking out loud “how you doing great grandmother?”. She grabbed my face softly while staring, then said to me “I don’t know who you are, but you are so beautiful”. In that moment, it dawned on me that she had no recollection of the pain she had caused my mom, or the hate she’d been taught and impressed onto others. She wasn’t aware that what she considered beauty under all of the layers of self-taught bias was a product of something she’d openly frowned upon. It took her forgetting all that she knew to freely embrace what once made her uncomfortable.
If you undid all that’s been registered in your head and heart from family, media, or experience and gave others the opportunity to shine based solely on who they are, you’d find so much more beauty in others. You miss out on the chance to grow individually and with others because you’ve unknowingly placed limits on what you’re willing to see in them. What if at the first glance of strangers we acknowledged that we didn’t recognize them, but chose to see the joy in them anyway? Why have we been programmed to pinpoint what we dislike about a person before we can identify what it is that makes them shine? Love first, love more, judge last.
Have a great week, xx.
I love this. Such a simple concept that we’ve somehow managed to make a complicated, hateful, saddening web out of. I’ve heard too many stories like this and the struggle that your mom had to go through simply because of who she loved. I think people often forget that we truly can’t help who we love, and that love is SO much more than the outer shell. People stop looking at a person and don’t give them a chance because of something so insignificant: skin color, weight, body type. I’ve been so lucky to have such a loving, supportive family, but my heart hurts for others who do not. Thanks for writing this and starting the week off with a loving message :-).
Thank you for reading Cori! The crazy thing is, she truly didn’t mean any harm. She was only expressing what she’d been known to think was right. We just gotta keep loving each other, it’s the best way to go. <3