Best Friends

When we talk about blended families, we normally highlight all of the challenges, the trials, or all of the negative aspects that families should look out for. It's true, starting with all the X-man and baby mama issues, down to sibling and step-sibling rivalries, there are a lot of danger zones involved with bringing two families into harmonious union. As strange as it sounds, we very rarely talk about the beautiful aspects of blending families, the moments that restore our faith in the process or each other.

My family has gone through several permutations over the years. From the OG nuclear family, which was more nuclear than necessary at times, through single parenting, and then remarriage and more kids, it's been a constant effort to create traditions and maintain relationships. When I first married my wife, we sought counseling from the start on how to navigate that new situation and how to best care for the kids. We decided to hold off on having more children for a couple of years to create some bonding, but then somehow we got pregnant on our honeymoon, and in less than a year, welcomed a new baby girl and moved into a bigger house. 

We were so worried about the impact a new baby would have on the family dynamic we were trying to create, but it turned out to be such a blessing. Our nine-year-old LaRue was an unexpected addition to the family, but she was also the only person in the home who was blood related to everyone else. There were moments that could have been so much more tense, arguments that could have gone off the rails entirely, but her presence smoothed so many of those things out. All of us, both parents and children, found ourselves watching our language in front of her, keeping peace because nobody wanted her to see the worst in us. She really was the glue that kept us together.

Then later, our family went through even more changes. My daughter got pregnant at a young age, and that situation caused us all to have to make some readjustments. I don't think we ever really told anyone, but my wife and I even discussed the possibility of adopting the new baby, so that our daughter could have a more normal life and the baby would have the best possible care. The thing is, I've heard so many painful stories about complicated family structures where mother and child are raised as siblings, and so much shame and anger is just buried beneath the floorboards of the nursery, as if that doesn't affect how that new child develops. When my wife and I discussed adoption, we agreed that everything would be out in the open.

In the end, my daughter showed every desire to raise this baby herself, and we decided it would be best to help her do that, come alongside her and provide her with resources, a stable home, and whatever wisdom we could offer. She turned out to be a good mother. Sure, she's made mistakes, and not every decision she's made was wise. But it's hard to say that she did worse as a new parent at eighteen and unmarried than I did at twenty-four and married.

The same month our granddaughter was born, we found out we were pregnant again. Oops. Our family goes through one more change, two new babies in the house, daughter and granddaughter, auntie and niece, and two moms under the same roof for a while.

But a funny thing happened, the baby girls, Janelle and Selah, didn't come up as sisters. And we don't all live together any more. They know that they're auntie and niece, even if they have a hard time explaining it to everyone else. Not only that, but our baby daughter Selah tells us all the time that Janelle is her best friend. They Facetime each other at least once a week at bedtime, and create their own little clique when they're together, imitating each other and feeding off of their own energies. Selah misses the time when they used to sleep in the same room, chatting each other to sleep. She even has a favorite book called "How Do You Sleep?" by Louise Bonnet-Rampersaud that ends with two little children falling asleep together cuddling in the same bed. Every time we read it, which is a lot, Selah asks when Janelle is coming back, and can they sleep like that. They can't, in case you're wondering. She looks at that picture at the end of the book and says, "This me, this Janelle." It's a relationship that nobody would have predicted, or even asked for, two-year-old auntie and three-year-old niece, but it's beautiful.

Blended families are difficult, but they can be beautiful as well, just like any family situation. If you're worried about how the kids will get through, my advice is this:

1) Love them. Make sure they know they're loved by everyone in the family.

2) Get help early on. Whether that's a family counselor, a church group, or a seasoned blended family which is thriving, acknowledge that it will be hard, and get ahead of the problems. If you know you're headed into uncharted land, it would be stupid not to take a map or consult a guide.

3) Look for beauty. Even in the darkest moments, there can often be streaks of light that will get you through it if you look for them.

Mixed Media

The first time I really remember seeing a mixed family in a commercial was the Cheerios ad that caused so much unnecessary controversy back in 2014. The ad depicted a little biracial girl dumping a box of bland tasting regular Cheerios all over her Black father sleeping on the couch. She deluges him in oat circles because she heard that they stop heart disease, and also because what else is he supposed to do, eat them? The controversy was truly ridiculous with a number of people responding that the company was trying to push some agenda on the unwitting public, which turned out to be the truth. The General Mills company later admitted that they designed the ad to get people to eat more tasteless cereal. On the other hand, the idea that a food corporation was actively trying to sell the idea of interracial families or increase the number of mixed children in the population is ridiculous.

Personally, the main thing I took away from the ad was that General Mills apparently thought that my family was a demographic worth engaging with, a market worthy of their psychological sorcery. It was validating in the sense that, despite all the insidious salesmanship, the people behind that campaign decided that there were enough mixed families in the world to warrant spending the money on a high-profile commercial. For once, it felt as if my family was included in the national family picture.

That kind of representation in media has a great impact on the people represented, as well as the others. There's been a lot of talk lately about diversity of characterization in books, shows, and movies. Almost every time, the attempts at diversity are met with backlash from those who are used to seeing only themselves on their screens in places of prominence. I suppose that seeing a beloved character like Captain America or Ariel depicted in a race other than the original vision could be alarming, but what are you really losing? If your understanding of Captain America as the spirit of the country, the emblem of freedom and strength can only be depicted by a white man, then the problem is not literary purity or comic book allegiance. Similarly, if your understanding of fish people is limited to white folks, you're really starting get get into silly territory.

As parents of mixed children, we have some that are darker skinned and some so light that they could pass without half trying. For that reason, we have a variety of children's books on our bookshelves that give them positive images of not only themselves, but also their parents, their cousins, and all of their different classmates, regardless of their race. Just the other day, my two-year-old was reading Dream Big by Joyce Wan, which depicts all sorts of heroic women. Normally, she looks at all the girls in the book and we ask her which one is her sister, her mother, her niece, or her friend. This time, however, she had picked it up in the middle of playtime and was pointing at all the girls, repeating "This me, this me" for each one. I've seen other videos of kids getting excited over Black Panther or Maribel from Encanto, because, for the first time, they see themselves in the hero.

This is why I'm committed to writing about mixed families in my stories. For one thing, it's my reality, my life, and my art flows out of my experience. But on another level, I want to see my family out in the world, and I want other families like mine to see themselves as well. So whenever I start anything from a flash fiction to a novel, I begin with the presupposition that it will center a mixed family, with some parameters.

1) The story cannot be entirely centered on the fact that the family is mixed. The goal is to normalize the multiracial family, not to fetishize it. For me, this means that the multiracial nature of the family is just part of the fabric of the universe, not some aberration to the norm. If the main conflict for the character or the family is just existing as multiracial, then the story is "othering" the mixed family instead of normalizing it.

2) It might seem counterintuitive, but I try to show that the disparity in culture can be challenging, instead of insisting on sending the message that "we're all the same under the skin." Multiracial family life and mixed race marriage is not all about skin color, for sure. However, under that skin is a psychology built on cultural experiences that shape a person, and whenever two people from different cultures try to live together and create a family, there is inevitable conflict about "the way things are done." Everything from budgeting to parenting will have cultural underpinnings that may be different. It requires acknowledgement, discussion, compromise, and often enough humility to see that your way or your people's way is not necessarily the only, or the best, way to do things.

3) For this reason, those cultural differences and disagreements about the way things should be done can be a great source of conflict in the story, without necessarily taking center stage. Great stories have layers of conflict that interact with and complicate each other. So a story that centers a mixed family can have the main conflict of loss - losing a house, losing a loved one, losing a job - which is universal to all families, and doesn't make the multiracial nature of the family seem like a "problem" itself. Still, woven in that main conflict of loss can be the minor conflict of learning how different cultures deal with loss. A Brit with a stiff upper lip married to an Indian or Caribbean with a culture of public, cathartic grieving is a situation that will create some imbalance and conflict that would make the story more interesting. In addition, these differences can be a source of strength, once a character achieves a proper understanding of the partner's "way." If that Brit can learn to let some of those feelings out, they can connect with the rest of the family on a deeper level, as well as avoiding stress-related heart disease down the road. Conversely, if the public griever can learn that their love for the deceased is not measured by the grandiosity of their outward show of emotions, they can also unburden themselves of their own stress and anxiety, without abandoning their culture. This kind of growth and change is what characterization and story is all about.

Regardless of whether we make a commitments to writing about certain ethnicities or family structures, it's important that we always figure ourselves into our stories and art, so that others can see themselves reflected back to them in positive ways through whatever medium we choose. But as consumers and audience members, we have to support the growing diversity of characters and cultural settings, even when they aren't like us. For white folks, that means not complaining when we are not the center of every story, or when it seems as if the trend is moving away from us and people who look like us.

I mean, you didn't really think you were Captain America, did you?