Are Those Your Kids: Introduction

Welcome to my blog! My name is Diedre.

My name is pronounced Day-dra. I’m often told that my name is spelled wrong.

Then I give the history lesson on my name.

Diedre, Deidre and all other forms are derived from Deirdre. I know my name isn’t spelled phonetically, but neither are several other words in the English language.

Since giving birth and getting back into the real world (braving shopping trips with a child), I’ve been asked the weirdest questions. One of which sticks with me. Is that your daughter? I mean for real for real, is that your daughter?

I was innocently shopping in Tj Maxx and had approached the check out counter. The young black guy proceeded to ask me at least five more times if my daughter was indeed my daughter. Never mind the fact that she was clinging to me and calling me mommy.

Then he finally said, her daddy must be light skinned. I wanted to say, get a clue! However, my shopping time with my daughter had expired as we approached nap time. I took to Facebook to rant.

I am a black woman married to a white man, and together we have two beautiful daughters, Melody & Daphne.

I’m 33 and have been married for 7 years.

Thankfully we live in a college town, so I don’t really have to think about the fact that we’re in an interracial relationship-I just get to enjoy being married to the person I love.

I think it’s interesting to me how people feel the need to say everything they are thinking. But there are so many successful biracial individuals in the world today (Alicia Keys, Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Israel Houghton, Tia & Tamera Mowry, Lenny Kravitz &  President Obama).

I wonder if they get questioned about their identities.

I was raised on an Air Force Base, so biracial and multiracial identities were the norm for me.

In fact, if you were to look at my circle of friends, you would see a rainbow. I do remember being in classes with people who were not raised in military families-for them interracial relationships were not the norm. Some of those people were hyper focused on people who were biracial.

They would often say things like, “What are you mixed with? You know black girls’ hair is not naturally that long.

” I guess I believed that too about black women. But I’ll save more of those thoughts for another post.

I look forward to your thoughts, suggestions and happy thoughts as I give this blog life.