Mama's Always White

As many of you know, my children have inherited their father's skin tone. White is not bright enough a color to describe their lack of pigmentation. These poor kids literally are devoid of any melanin whatsoever. They are negative factor melanin. It is a huge detriment here on the equator. Just to go outside for a short walk around the block requires me to slather loads of zinc oxide based skin block.

Last Saturday, we were supposed to go to the beach with another family. After heaping the sunblock on both the kids, loading the car including a huge cooler with food and drink, and packing enough change of clothes to keep a small country in the latest aloha fashions, we wound up staying home and watching Animal Planet while eating fruity snacks.

How did that happen, you ask? Well, Reilly rubbed her eyes. A simple enough action that caused the ruin of an entire beautiful Hawaiian day. She rubbed the sunblock straight into her eyes, irritating them so badly that it took 2 hours for her to stop crying and a 2 and a half hour nap for Mommy to recover from Mommy Guilt.

I'm in a damned if you do, damned if you don't quandary. If I don't put the sunblock around her eyes, they burn. I know. I've avoided her eye areas before. She burned. As any high school drop out turned cosmetic counter salesperson can tell you, the skin surrounding the eyes is the most delicate skin on the body. You burn that and, quite frankly people, you wind up looking like Katherine Hepburn by the age of 22. I don't want that on my conscience.

But if I put the damn stuff around her eyes, she winds up rubbing it into her tear ducts. Depending on how much of the gunk I slathered on, it can be a day breaker. Saturday, I doubled coated her.

Yesterday we tried again to go to the beach. It took a fifteen minute phone call with my mother to convince Reilly to even be in the room with me and the bottle of SPF 50. It took another full hour to get it on her. With a lot of care and cautious application, I did get the lotion on without it getting into her eyes or any other sensitive areas.

But here's the thing. I used this line to convince her that she needs the lotion: "You are special and need this lotion. You are white. White means you burn in the sun and you need lotion to protect you from burning." I repeated this over and over, varying it a bit each time.

"You have special white skin."

"You can burn and need lotion because of your special white skin."

"If we don't put the lotion on, the sun could hurt you because you are special."

Do you see where I'm going with this yet? By the time we got to the beach, Reilly Kate was repeating this to herself and anyone else who would listen. "I am white. I am special."

Huh? That isn't what I meant. Well, it is. But it isn't.

Here in Hawaii, we haoles (white people in Hawaiian) are in the minority. Bringing my children up with this unusual American experience is something I treasure. I believe it will lend to them a unique perspective about race and justice. I hope they come away richer, more textured, and more compassionate for it. Yet here's my daughter announcing to an entire beach where we are among just a few other haoles that she is special because she is white. I wanted to dig a sand hole with her little plastic shovel and crawl right into it.

In describing her as special I was meaning disadvantaged "special." In this day of political correctness we use the word "special" in Special Education. Special Education doesn't mean it is better or more elite. In fact, if you want to get right down to it, it means disadvantaged. There is no air of superiority surrounding a special ed class. If you are in Special Ed it's because you just can't hack the regular ed. We say quadriplegics are "special." Nobody's envying them, right?

I remember a kid I went to kindergarten with, David. David had horrible asthma and had to sit out games of kickball because he was "special." We all knew that David wasn't "special" in a good way. He was sickly and we sure as hell were glad we weren't him. And this was back in the 70s before "special" hit its full stride.

But here I've got my "special" because she is white and lives on the equator and could get skin cancer or wrinkles without the protection of a high SPF daughter walking around telling all our various neighbors and local beach goers that she is special because she is white. We're gonna be labeled "that KKK family." I just know it. I have visions of phone calls from her preschool teachers and angry parents of classmates.

She is a colorless girl living in a colored world. And all I wanted to do was put her stinking sunblock on. Maybe we should just stick to indoor activities. Like mall walking.