Black Like Me

No it's not time for another Caucasian vs Ethnic hair diatribe, although Black Like Me is to most of us a common hair care brand. No, this runs skin deep and is in the words of Mastercard "priceless".
My husband and I were sitting on the stoep (veranda for my US readers, to whom I am very grateful for their audience) when my daughter was a lot younger, probably nine months or so. She was sitting on the floor playing and my son, a couple of years older was sitting close by with his large box of assorted plastic building blocks.
A word on this box of blocks; he could not live without it, he builds Dr Seuss-style houses with a fervour quite rare in one so young. He can spend hours building the most elaborate pieces of architecture, or a minute, one can never be sure. One of our most feared sounds is the clamorous tipping out of the entire box onto the slate floor at 5.30 in the morning. It elicits an involuntary, lengthy groan from our bed in which we are still stubbornly ensconced, denying the inevitable.
I doubt we were sitting quietly reading that afternoon on the stoep, this is a pastime denied the new parent, we may have been watching our new baby girl and marvelling at the incredible coordination displayed by one so young – smiling contentedly, nodding to each other knowingly – but more probably we were listening to an endless, mind-numbing stream of questions and commentary in a language that takes infinite concentration to understand from our son – answers are demanded so attention must be paid – and trying to stop the Jack Russell licking her in the face.
From nowhere he stops and says, "Hey!"
We look up to find him pointing at his sister's neck in sheer amazement, "Ella's black like me!"
For a moment we're dumbstruck and both venture a tentative, "What?"
"ELLA! SHE'S BLACK LIKE ME!"
He couldn't believe it and there it was right before his innocent two-year-old eyes.
It was so random, so left field, so out of nowhere that we guffawed, then laughed and giggled; much later we were still sniggering. It was his sheer surprise.
Of course we knew that at some point our children would realize our skin colour was not the same as theirs – every older child at his nursery school had and as children do had inquired extensively about this anomaly – but when it happened we weren't prepared even though in our adoption screening we had been extensively prepped.
But this, as with most things to do with our son, was on its head; he had identified with her, rather than comparing with us.
When we'd gathered ourselves my husband asked, "What colour am I?"
He thought a minute then referred to what he was most familiar with, his blocks, rummaged carefully through the box and triumphantly produced a block, holding it on high.
"Red!"