I didn’t have many negative experiences growing up due to people behaving badly because I’m mixed race. There were certainly things that may have been happening that were not overt, that my mother would angrily articulate to me — observations she had made in cases where she felt I wasn’t being treated well because of my composition. (To be fair to her [because making noticings of this sort in front of a child who didn’t notice is, arguably, not very careful], there were some very close and dear relatives to her who told her to abort me because I would grow up in a world where, “Neither side will accept him.” That isn’t a sob story because I never heard them say it and my mother brought me into the world.)

From my own observations, there were just a few incidences in all of my years growing up that were unarguably racist. Those all happened from ages 9 to 12. There were things that I wondered about — whether they were motivated by someone’s dislike of my being mixed I didn’t know for real. I had no true sense as to whether those wonderings in my mind were influenced by my mother’s protective, unguarded articulations. I have a special pre-9y.o. memory, though, that was racial in nature — during and immediately after which I felt embarrassed, but embarrassed, I learned later, by love. It was not injurious because, though I may have been embarrassed when I was young, my memory of the event has re-curated into a experience of kindness that has grown sweeter with time. That happened by being given opportunities to understand.

I was spending the night at the home of my adoptive grandparents, Bill and Pete. Bill was helping me with a bath. Whatever age I was, I was young enough to still be playing with toys in a bubble bath. Bill came in to do my hair and wash my back. Out of nowhere, he yelled, ”Pete! Pete! Come in here!” I think the shout alone put me in a nervous state, and that may be the explanation for why I was embarrassed.

The loud and exuberant happening — all of this blazing attention. I mean, when we had just moved here from California, my mother and I went to my aunt and uncle’s house for my birthday. They made a cake for my fourth birthday and everyone sang the song to me. I was standing at the end of a long table and they — my aunt and uncle, my cousins, my mom — were all sitting around it with a cake in the middle that was on fire. And they were staring at my face, singing happy birthday. I remember wanting that moment to hurry up and be over. Then they launched into a second song I didn’t know. How oOold are you? How oOold are you? And worse still, they started chanting, shouting, demanding — Are you ONE?! Are you TWO?! I started crying. So it might be on me as well when Bill shouted and I got scared.

Pete ran into the bathroom, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, and then said to her, “Look at this boy’s beautiful brown skin. Isn’t that just so beautiful? How could anybody hate somebody for skin like this?”

I don’t know because I don’t remember, but maybe hearing that some people hated my skin made it feel bad. Or maybe having my skin talked about at all did. I really can’t say. I do know that this was the first racial experience I remember. (Racial, not racist. There was no mean or hateful attention directed at me. That would be racist. Rather, it simply was an experience definitely related to my race. Racial.)

As I said above, this was an experience I had since which, when it has returned to me, has filled me with a sense of tenderness and sweetness toward that gentle old man, Bill.

Not every moment is the kind of moment in which you can sit and wait for later until you know what it means, but neither does all understanding happen right away. I believe that we conclude and re-conclude (and re-re-re-conclude) many events from our lives over their course. The beautiful brown skin of experience achieves its marvelous tints and shades in seasons of all kinds. Many things I haven’t liked at the time turned out later to be good, and some things that seemed alright turn out to have been better avoided.

And I’m not saying things turn out and don’t turn out certain ways simply due to some kind of mechanical causation. I know that what I do inside of myself has a whole lot to do with the meaning of what happens outside of myself.

I don’t believe that I can count how many beautiful complexions experience has, but it is kaleidoscopically more than the billion pinks and browns of our planet’s single pigment.