To be comfortable in your own skin. To the toughest questions. And to those who answer them.

May 14, 2023

To be comfortable in your own skin. To the toughest questions. And to those who answer them.

To be comfortable in your own skin

As an adult, I do know these words don't convey the literal sense. Its far more nuanced.

But as a child, the literal sense is what I struggled with. I have earlier written about how my wise and sensitive mother helped me come to terms with it. My entire being had so imbibed her words that I never fell to doubt since then. (https://www.mumsandstories.com/2016/09/26/not-fair-but-lovely-blog-post-by-jita-susan-jacob/)

Fast forward to sometime around a year back. That girl, herself a mom now.

A school trip day. All fun and lots of shine. Tucking tired kids into bed should be a quick one, I thought. We're at the last few pages of the storybook, when out of the blue my child whispered, "I don't like my skin color."

I froze, like a deer in headlights. "But, why", I somehow pushed the words out.

"I am dark skinned. It is not good.", he whispered.

There is a fleeting moment, right before sleep conquers, when truths and fears come tumbling out through that miniscule window of opportunity. The moment was soon to be lost.

Activating swift damage mode, I quickly tried to reason and show pictures of famous personalities who are of a dark skin tone, trying to replicate from my own experience. "But I still don't like my skin color. I want to be light skinned", he whispered. With slumber swiftly staking claim of him, the moment was gone forever. I was left hapless and sleepless, speed-dialing my husband and parents. The next morning, my child seemed not to register when I brought up the topic; a clean slate. My worry seemed to be unwarranted, until..

A regular day. Its play time and random topics are tossed around for discussion - A friend's birthday is coming up. There is a new app for reading. Someone needs seconds for snacks. In the midst, a statement activates my alert mode "In my login, there is a picture of a boy in the app. He doesn't look like me." The warning signals are on, the adults get to investigation. Yes, the avatar assigned by default is a fair boy with a baseball cap. Cute one, but doesn't look like the child. We search the available avatars, none are representative of the child. Finally, we upload his own photo. Thumps up for a save, I thought. But he seemed disappointed for not finding an avatar of his likeness.

And soon I realized, the topic was on the slate all along, probably marked with some vanishing ink that only showed up under a certain light. Twice. The child shared his plight. 'Its not a beautiful colour.' I said "Of course it is, it is the color of Earth.", though actually intending to say 'mud'. Try saying that to a five year old. It really didn't make sense and he looked even more distraught.

The second time, I think I may have come close to getting it right. "But why, isn't it the colour of chocolate?" His eyes twinkled and for the first time I think he could agree.

Nowadays, when he draws himself, he uses the colour brown.

Even as I tried all this, I seemed to just get confused further. Around this time, my daughter brought a drawing she made of our family; each of us depicted in our own skin colour. Initially I chided her fearing the reactions (as all characters in my drawings as a child would be 'flesh colour'), but then saw it in a positive light after discussing with my husband. To come up with the right answer every time, isn't easy.

I don't really celebrate Mother's day.

But something triggered this write-up, so my long-neglected blog got some activity. Today, on mother's day, the kiddos got me some cute cards. My daughter portrayed me, her mother, as such - brown with black hair. I just felt happy.