This is not the post I had plan to write tonight. But after messing around with this photo and seeing it mixed in with the rest of the days documentation I was overwhelmed. This photo makes me cry. For reasons of both happiness and sadness.

This is a photo of my daughter and one of her closest friends. They are similar in temperament and get along really well together. Their relationship is based purely on these pillars of friendship. I am glad for my daughter to have the opportunity to grow up with a friend that isn’t the same white bread back ground as just about everyone else we regularly spend time with. I didn’t have a racially diverse childhood. And not to say this makes hers very diverse either, but it’s more than I had. And certainly not to make her the token black child in our circle, even though she is the minority.

My daughter doesn’t see these compliments to their friendship. She enjoys her friends company. She doesn’t see her as a well rounding experience or a child that comes with a story much different than hers. She is her friend and playmate. And how happy that makes me! Love is blind.

Yet this is not the whole story. And although this girl sees Ginger as her partner in spinning and jumping she also notices that she is different. The color of her skin is brown and not white. Her families skin is not like hers either because she is adopted. And us white folk in her circle can love her and see her as one of our own kids but it doesn’t change the overt differences that she openly struggles with. And this makes me sad.

Sometimes all the love and good wishes we have for our kids isn’t enough. All that love can’t explain everything. This friend is going to have to find the answers she needs to so many questions that our kids will never need to ask. We can be there for her and shake our heads that the difference in skin color should be no more than the difference in hair color. But it is. We can be supportive of her family as they live in an open adoption. And we can talk. We can talk openly within our families as well as with each other about these differences. But we can also learn from the innocence of a child and just love blindly for the pure reason of friendship.

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