Face Of Another

During the school year, The Exchange lives with his mother and maternal grandmother in a town near the Spanish border. His grandmother is elderly and a little confused, he said. Somehow, she got it in her head that The Boy would understand her better if she spoke to him in Spanish. I asked if she thought The Boy was Spaniard. He's been mistaken for that before. The Exchange said no, she's just old and confuses the two languages since they are both foreign languages to her.

Then I asked The Boy if he's picked up any Spanish as a result of the grandmother speaking to him. He seemed surprised, not having clued in until now that's what the grandmother had been using.

The Boy told me The Exchange's mother speaks excellent English. I asked The Exchange how she learned. He said, "In school."

"But she speaks it so well."

"No, she doesn't. She just likes to speak English so she tried to speak it all the time to The Boy."

Well that explains why she didn't understand me in the two phone conversations we had.

Then The Exchange dropped a good one. He said his paternal grandfather was Cambodian. You would never know looking at him with his light complexion, hazel eyes, tall nose and wavy brown hair. In fact, he looks quite like Frodo in Lord Of The Rings.

In the one photograph of his father we have, the father doesn't look Cambodian either. But The Exchange said his half brother, who is 6-years-old, has Asiatic features. The Boy agreed.

I suppose it's possible. Looking at Kid2, you would never know that she has Chinese blood, what with her blondish hair and round eyes.

I once had a friend who was blond with a Chinese surname. We were in grade six and she was a rough and tumble girl. Definitely not the hair-dying kind. She said her biological father was Chinese, though she had no Asiatic features. Her brother, however, was very oriental looking.

The Boy had a pretty friend once who had curly dark hair with hazel eyes. I thought she was Italian. Lo and behold, her father is black and her mother white Russian.

There is no predicting what bi-racial kids look like. You just accept that they have an exquisite genetic blend.