I've been hesitating about sharing this, but someone else might be facing something similar so here goes.
When Jia was younger, if asked about the color of her eyes, she would say they were brown. But sometimes, she would quietly add, "But they'll turn blue someday."
Joe and I have blue eyes.
Whenever I heard this, I gently reminded her that her eyes would always stay a beautiful brown, just like Willa's, and Aunt Susie's and those of our numerous friends. We talked about our differences and our similarities and how they can be special and interesting. We've read many books about it. We talked about how families who don't look alike in every aspect are families just the same, and talked about the many families we know who don't look matched in every way. She can see this just by looking at her own extended family. Jia has so many people in her life who look like her. People who have brown eyes just like her. But Joe and I don't.
She secretly remained hopeful.
Until the other day. She was reading a book and I asked her about it. Jia pointed to a character and said, "She is sad because she looks different from her parents." Then she looked up at me and said, "My eyes will be different from yours and Baba's
forever." And she cried.
A few weeks later, I was putting her to bed and she wanted to talk about where people were born. This has been a topic that has interested her lately. She asks friends where they were born, asks us where family members were born, and it has come up at school. She has been fixated on who was born here, in our city. Many of the people she knows were born here, including Joe and I. We talked about the various other places people were born, but she kept wanting to focus on us. I said, "I know you're sad that you weren't born in the same place as me and Baba." She burst into loud sobs. She is just beginning to realize that all of these facts, these differences, won't ever change.
