To Prepare A Face

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions

From "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Profrock" by T. S. Eliot

He's Not White Or Black

All the recent media coverage celebrating our “first black president” makes me recall an interesting article in the Washington Post entitled He's Not Black.

Being in a interracial marriage and raising an interracial son, debates on ethnic identity sparked by Obama's election have a sense of urgency to me. How do I raise my son to be himself when society cannot decide what he is?

Barack Obama calls himself “Black” although his mother was a white woman from Kansas. He has brown skin and coarse hair. He identifies himself as what he looks like rather than what he is. Obama was raised during a time of racial tension in America when those with mixed heritage were often stuck in a cultural no-man's-land. In a sense he was forced to pick a side. In his book “Dreams From My Father” he says that he felt as a young man that people that identified themselves as interracial were betraying their fellow blacks as just “ordinary niggers.” (His words)

That young man eventually got his bearings and achieved greatness. The America that elected him president is very different than the one into which he was born. The political tensions surrounding race have dissipated, something America seems to have only fully realized once a brown-skinned man became president. Cultural assumptions based on ethnicity, however, are as prevalent as ever. Jamie Foxx commented at an inaugural ball that Obama's dance moves were proof “we definitely have a black president.” We are right to assume that culture and upbringing have an effect on a person, but it is absurd when we assign cultural identities to a people just because of their skin. Obama was raised by a white Kansan mother in Indonesia, but that doesn't matter. He is just “black.” You are what you appear to be.

It is this racial destiny assigned by looks that gave me anxiety when my wife was pregnant. I wondered how I a white man would raise a son that was identified by everyone as a black man. An unusual genetic shuffle, however, produced the opposite of what I anticipated. If Barack Obama is black, then my son is certainly white. His skin is lighter than mine and his hair is very straight. Even thought he looks just her, people seem to assume his beautiful, black mother is his babysitter. Throughout his life people will think he is white and make assumptions about him based on assigning him to this racial group.

My son may be light-skinned but he is not white nor do I want him to be. Obama may be dark-skinned but he is not black even though he calls himself that. Even the American categories of “white” and “black” are imprecise groupings of people of many ethnicities that where artificially created to justify slavery and segregation. It is true that culture and family affect an individual, but assigning culture based on skin tone is backward. Perhaps eons ago when humans rarely moved one could make accurate judgments about lineage and culture just by looking at a person's features, but in our interconnected world assumptions based on skin are more likely to mislead than inform.

Obama described his first innocent encounters with the world when “I was too young to realize I needed a race.” He doesn't need a race, nor does my son. Nor does anyone. A person's physical description doesn't necessitate a cultural classification. My son will probably always be fair-skinned, but that doesn't make him white and it definitely doesn't make him less his mother's child. He is who he is, and he can be proud of all of his heritage without having to pick or have one assigned to him.

The Washington Post wrote “We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.” Racism may be nearly eradicated but Race with all its presumptions and misjudgments is alive and well. We can discuss our cultures and bodies without needing to draw these artificial lines between us. I hope my son is proud of all of his family and his heritage. He doesn't need to claim a color in order to have identity. He is himself and that should be enough.

Ortona Italy

One year ago today my wife and I were walking the streets of Ortona Italy, the town on the other side of the world where my grandfather Eduardo Pantaloni grew up. Then we hadn't even yet conceived of the little boy (Eduardo's great-grandson) who I hold in my lap as I write now.

I think of Eduardo (who changed his name to Edward when he immigrated) growing up in Ortona and my little son growing here in my lap. Eduardo died on Christmas day when I was only a little boy. One of my strongest memories is of him telling me about the beautiful farms in the seaside village were he grew up, only a few days before he died.

He has been dead for decades now, and no one in his home town remembers his name. He is even a distant memory to me. It makes me realize that even though I am 30 now I will also someday be gone and forgotten even in the places that were once my home.

This makes me glad that I am a father. My son may not know it now but his great-grandparents who will only exist in his mind as black and white photos have left themselves in my wife and me, and thus their lives project into his own. Similarly I will leave myself in him.

I Planted A Child

I was thinking about my son today as I tried to save my dying plants. Right now the man he will become is developing beneath the surface of his infancy. I imagine him putting down the first delicate roots that will deepen to sustain him through the droughts and storms of life.

My recent fitful attempts at gardening brought a disconcerting thought to mind: small early damage can doom a plant. I planted hydrangeas that withered in a late frost. At first they seemed to recover and even grow, but one by one they all died.

Today I was trying to save my shriveling plants from the sweltering heat of a Georgia summer drought. I was out of town so they didn't get any watering. Their new root systems weren't strong enough to reach the deep water like the big white oaks in the front yard. My vegetable garden is lost and many of the trees I planted were withering. I attempted to revive the little maple by the driveway with water, but I wonder if from now on it may always be stunted. Even a redwood I planted last Fall was visibly damaged.

I want my son to grow into a man like a redwood: immovable, deep, self-contained. They grow to become the world's tallest trees, but the little redwood in my back yard is nearly dead after a few weeks of drought.

Of course the principles of gardening are simple and well known. Babies are more complex. Conflicting theories abound on how not to damage their developing souls.

When I hear my baby cry what should I do? One theory tells me I must immediately go to him and comfort him. He will learn love, kindness, and trust from this, otherwise he would grow up cold, distant, unable to connect to another. Another theory tells me as long as he has recently been fed, cleaned, and loved I should let him cry. Self-soothing will develop self-control and patience. Immediately comforting every cry creates self-absorption and a false expectation that the world should always serve him.

The problem with babies is that their rooting takes place beneath the surface. They cannot tell us about their formation, nor will they recall it afterwards. All our theories about their developing souls are speculation, and the vast differences among children make clear patterns difficult to ascertain. Perhaps we flatter ourself to think we are influencing their formation at all. Perhaps they arrive with roots already so deep within the soil of themselves that they are hardier than any fitful weather of infancy.

I wonder if my abilities as a father will be any better than my gardening? I am certain within my love I am already making mistakes. I am reminded of Paul's words “I planted... but God gave the increase.” I can water, fertilize, prune, provide sunlight and shelter, but the life within a growing tree will remain a hidden mystery. It is the same with my son. He is not my own. I pray that God is good to him, and guides him with a steadier hand than my own.

Doctoring and Parenting

When the midwife found out I was a doctor who had delivered babies in the past she offered for me to assist with the delivery. I declined mainly because I knew my wife would prefer I focus solely on emotional support.

Now it is interesting to realize how much I am shunning any sort of doctoring in my new son's life. I haven't even laid a stethoscope on him to check his heart for murmurs. I am realizing that there is such a difference in perspective that I never want to think as a physician about my child.

A doctor looks for flaws—a parent only sees perfection. A doctor tries to remain objective—a parent unreservedly loves. A doctor prepares for possible future illness and disability—a parent looks at his child's life with optimism. A doctor expects death and decay—a parent lives to hope for his child.

I used to think that being a physician would be be a wonderful asset in my parenting. Now I think I'll leave my doctoring at the hospital, and leave my son's doctoring to his physician. I am his father and I want to be nothing else to him.

Good Tidings of Great Joy

Our little baby boy was born in the early hours of the morning two days ago. He is sleeping beside me as I write now. I am overwhelmed with joy and love for this little child as I finally get to hold him in my arms. He is so tiny and beautiful. All my anxieties about fatherhood just melt into simple love. I look forward to watching him grow over the years and teaching him about the world. I hope he becomes a better man than me.

I know The Gridbook Blog isn't typically for updates about my life, but such monumental news I couldn't help but put here. For more details and pictures you can read my personal blog here and here.

A Tragic Mulatto

While my overwhelming feeling about our son we expect to be born this summer is joy, I have also have some of the self doubt that likely affects all new parents. One particular concern is the complexity of race my son will face:

Why is the biracial child always supposed to be a tragedy stuck between two worlds? Historically it was typically the white parents that hid these inconvenient results of affairs (Strom Thurman). Now the typical scene is older white grandparents raising a mixed child after the dissolution of the relationship that brought it about. Certainly the acceptance of these children that were once viewed as proof of the crime of miscegenation (or even rape) has improved in recent decades, but they are still often viewed as problematic in-between people. While the virulence of Racism (the belief that race makes a person superior or inferior to others) has become exceedingly rare, the problems of race in America—prejudice, misunderstanding, inequality, resentment, interpretation of history—are far from resolved. Here in Clarke County, Georgia there is still a palpable division between black and white populations. While much of racial integration in the United States may be producing a melting pot, here it still quite obvious on a drive through Athens that “haves” and “have nots” are still mostly divided by race.


So I will be a white father to a son that everyone will usually identify as African American. He will be biracial, but in most people's minds that will count him as black (eg: Haley Berry and Barack Obama both have one Caucasian parent). He will carry the cultural weight of expectations based solely on his skin color. He will have people expect him to be somehow better at sports, more sexual, cooler, tougher, more rhythmic, and less interested in learning. These are the expectations (even admirations) that our society puts on black boys. He will be informed by people that barely know him that he has been wronged by crimes committed years before his birth, and because of this he must act or identify himself in way to amend these ills. He will be told by others that he must be a individual, and any identification with any ethnicity or appeal to his unique dilemmas as a biracial man is nothing but weakness or whining.


But what will his father tell him? I am a product of my own place and I have never known many of the pressures my son will face. I wish I could say that my own experience of interracial marriage has helped me “figure out” the complex and often unspoken rules and taboos of race in today's America, but I have no great wisdom to offer my son.


What he will have for certain is two parents who know themselves and will love each other and him deeply. Beyond the self-knowledge he will have from the experience of his home, I'm not sure he will have much education on the confusing situation he will inherit. I suppose like most children he will have to figure out his identity on his own.

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