This election cycle has afforded our nation an opportunity to check our progress on a number of things, but for me and my kids, it's more about how far we have yet to go. The subject of race is a good example.

I raised my two kids without any mention of race until they heard it somewhere else first. I didn't do this on purpose, more because I didn't know what to say. My background with the subject was so convoluted. I was born in the late 60's, a ward of the state in a city experiencing some of the worst of the civil rights unrest. My biological father was "black" and my biological mother was "white." My foster and later adoptive family was "white," and I was raised in mostly white communities. I had a run-in with affirmative action in the 80's that left me declaring my race as human ever since. The writings of Dr. King also influenced and continued to strengthen the conviction of this decision.

I have experienced racism from whites and from blacks and understand from where it comes, but more importantly I have experienced the best of humanity with people of many races and lifestyles, shapes and sizes. So I was at a loss for preschool words on the subject. The end result was my kids (who have "white" fathers--in darker days one would say they can "pass") thought it was perfectly normal to have come from the belly of a mother with much darker skin who had a mother with much lighter skin named Grammy, but she didn't grow in Grammy's belly. It was normal to share features with a mother and a father who looked so different from each other. There was something incredibly natural about the normalcy of it all in their young eyes.

For both the rude awakening came around the age of 5. For the eldest it was someone referring to me as "black;" for the youngest it was a discussion about the black history in kindergarten to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Both came home in shellshock, and the processing on the subject of race with each has been ongoing ever since. My main theme in our discussions has pretty much been that it is important to honor the history of race relations, however, that history and other people's neverending issues with it should never define who they are. It is possible to honor history without being a victim to it.

It turns out that, at the time, both had thought of skin color as no different than eye color or hair color. There's a span of years between them, so I was surprised how parallel the reactions and conclusions. My youngest has a "white" friend who was raised the same way, and his mother said he had drawn the same conclusion and had had the same reaction to his rude awakening. If you follow out their preschool train of thought, I and any other people of mixed lineage are no more black than white. To say so is to say that a brown-eyed white white child is somehow more the child of his brown-eyed father than his hazel-eyed mother. Try explaining otherwise to a five year old with no other previous frame of reference on the matter.

As for my vote, it's still looking for someone to acknowledge that our nation needs to move in leaps and bounds to catch up to my kids' progressive thinking on race and other problems, like economic justice, health care, criminal justice, war as a solution, etc. And I'd also like to vote for someone who can define what those leaps and bounds should look like, at least roughly. The following poem was written about the conversation immediately following my eldest's rude awakening. It's twelve years old, but it still works for me today; I'd like to vote for someone who will lead in such a way that the sentiment behind this poem will be old news twelve years from now.

The Color of Love

Sometimes when we talk

And I listen

I know why my son is here

Like the time he said

Out of the blue

Mom, you're like brownish

He left the 'like brownish'

Hanging like a giant comma

Waiting for my open quotation marks.

The exact tone and hesitation of the comma

Suggested he had a specific dialogue in mind

But I would not be privy to a script.

So I took a deep breath and said

Yes, I am most definitely brownish.

Are you thinking of the word 'black'?

Yes, because people say you're black,

But you're not. You're like brownish,

Again with the giant comma-- I fumble momentarily,

It's funny the word 'black' like that,

Inserting a giant comma of my own

Yes, because people are like maybe

Whitish or even vanilla-ish and brownish, but never ...

Blackish, I finish,

I guess that's one time when 'black'

Is just a word, not a color;

Is it hard having a Momma that's a different color?

Not really.

Does it ever bother you?

No, because of how much you love me.

Flat. Like that. Period.

Me, I'm silently gushing exclamation points

All over the place.

So, I guess love doesn't have a color?

No, definitely not.

I love you sweetheart.

I love you too momma.