Monday, November 12, 2007

Grandma's hilarious addition to the Solemn Dialogue on Race

It's 8:00 PM. Minkie's gone to sleep and I just popped in a nice, relaxing, evening yoga DVD. I am hoping that no one watches me.

My mom makes herself a snack and settles in the glider behind me.

I am working myself into a shoulderstand when Mom says, "Is she Indian? She looks *just like you*!"

"No she doesn't," I grunt, watching as Hemalaya, the teacher, rolls out of the pose.

Mom isn't blinking. "Yes she does! That's you!" She is excited.

"Mom! I look like a lot of Indian people!" I tell her. I have been told all my life that I look like the quintessential Kerala female. I was born and brought up in the U.S., so I just take that on faith.

"Do you know her?" Mom asks.

If I didn't know it was my mother sitting there, snacking and chatting behind me, I would have *sworn* it was a white lady from NotDiverseLand. Nope- my own mother, born and raised in Kerala, India, immigrated in her early thirties, is asking me if I know the Indian woman in the tv doing yoga. Because we look so alike.

And that is your parenting moment of Zen for the day.