Team Gray!

I’m thinking I should have illustrated that last post. Here’s a picture of the little kids with their big brother, taken at Thanksgiving.

Here are the girls and me at Yanni’s 20th birthday celebration.

(I still don’t do the troll face right).

We all blend together well, I think, with none of us sharing the exact same complexion.

Here’s one of my favorites of my husband and our youngest son.

We’re a spectrum.

The other weekend, I went to a party with my husband. It was the day before my daughter’s 20th birthday, and I hoped to buy her present in a more exotic mall than here in town.

Grand Rapids had just such a mall.

I was dressed for the party, and had even been made up by my personal beauty expert. I was looking together, is what I’m saying, and excited for the evening to begin.

A salesgirl planted herself by my side as soon as I stepped in the store. She was young, with pierced dimples and her hair was shaved and curled to precision.

This young sister leaned in close to me and asked, “What are you mixed with?”

I did not just hear this. I didn’t say anything.

“Are you mixed?” She insisted.
“No,” I said.
“You’re just black?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very pretty,” she said. “Thank you,” I responded, stunned by the whole exchange.

I thought of what my father would have said. He would have said, “We’re all mixed with something…”

And he has a point, but that’s not what the girl asked me. Mixed has come to mean, ‘do you have parents of different races?’, rather than ‘do you have some Indian in you?’ or some such refrain from the past.

My mother was quite the genealogist. She was able to trace my father’s family back to Africa. My mother’s family had more tangled roots in its tree.

I know I’m pale. I fade in the winter. This is not due to a white parent, though, or grandparent. The closest white relative we’ve hunted down was my father’s paternal great-grandfather. My mother came from generations of light skinned black folks intermarrying.

She was dark in her family. My father was light in his. Guess what? My parents were the same complexion.

Go figure.

My oldest daughter has been called exotic, and she gets the mixed question. My oldest son? No. I’ve noticed that people who know my younger children don’t connect my older son to them or me. They know my son, but they don’t know he’s my son.

I didn’t think anything of this, but my husband tells me that everyone knows he’s Xavier’s father. Even if they see Curtis without Xay, people know he’s his father.

Is it a complexion thing? My oldest two are darker than the younger children. Number 6 seems to be following in their footsteps. I think it’s great.

My husband would have asked the salesgirl what she was mixed with. He would have said, “You’re just black?” “You’re really pretty.”

I wish I’d said that.

I got some expert advice to let the gingerbread house pieces sit out until they were all dried out. 48 hours was mentioned. Then one of the walls broke.

So I made a replacement, which would put us out a few more days before making the house. And have you seen how antsy the children are? I had beat them back from the candy for 2 days already, and they were bored, pitiful, and wah, wah, wah.

So today I broke out the candy and said we’d try our hand at assembling the house.

It started out ok, but we did have to wait at least a few hours for the new wall to dry. Note the broken wall on the same tray.

Meanwhile, we made many snowmen.

Marshmallows and toothpicks–that’s what I remember from my childhood candy houses.

The kids were candy obsessed, and came up with many colorful embellishments for the simple snowmen.

Eventually, the new side had cooled. I was ready to try and glue it to the house. But…someone had eaten much of the royal icing. I made a batch of boiled icing to take its place. I always hated it when my mother used that word, ‘icing,’ rather than ‘frosting.’ But now I see there is a major difference between the two. I’m reminded of another of my mother’s annoying phrases: “Learn some words!”

I digress.

The house was coming along well. Four sides and time to rest.

I was worried about the roof, which seemed a tad small, but hey, if there was give in the frame, that wouldn’t be a big problem. And, besides, icing covers a multitude of sins, right?

And, we have a roof! I was feeling pretty good. Good enough to pull out another house, and work on it.

This is our dollhouse project, which stalled because our kit didn’t come with windows. I’d found a piece of plastic to substitute, though, and this project was enough of a diversion to keep the kids occupied while we waited for the gingerbread house to dry. It’s funny how much more confidence I had working with the wood than the food….

I snuck off into the dining room and covered 1/2 of the roof with m&m’s.

That looked pretty good, especially with the boiled icing resembling deep snow. I showed the kids, moved the house to the kitchen, and started working on the other half of the roof. Imani jumped in with me. We had the roof covered in no time.

But, the more we worked on it, the flimsier the house became. I moved the house back to the dining room, with several strategically placed toothpicks to hold it together.

The side with the door and the window had already cracked. The top triangle of the house broke off–it was a neat break, at least.

Xavier asked me if I’d gotten a picture of the completed house. I told him yes I had, without wondering why he asked me that.

I looked over, and the whole house had fallen. I told the children, and they happily decorated the whole heap with candy, declaring that it was more fun to decorate a broken house than a whole house.

They placed a snowman for each child upon the wreckage, and proceeded to snack and pick at it until dinner.

I promised I wouldn’t post a picture of a mess. You’ll have to settle for 1,000 words this time.