My friend texts me from the 
beauty salon. Her eleven year-old son is getting dreadlocks. A Bob Marley fan and a whimsical kid, he’s been asking for some time to get his hair “locked.” My friend and her husband are Caucasian; their son is African-American.
The salon is owned by sisters who are Jamaican. One has a daughter about my friend’s son’s age. The girl is bi-racial; her father is a fair-skinned Caucasian man. My friend says the girl’s skin is a “kind of lovely latte color.” The girl chats with the salon customers and then turns to my friend and says, “Your husband must be really dark. I mean your son is, so…” Her voice trails off.
“He was adopted,” my friend explains. “He was born in Africa.”
“Oh – Africa,” the girl says, shrugging, and then she moves on and chats with another customer.
“I loved that she asked me, that she was so direct,” my friend said. “She was just trying to figure out where he fit. It was quite sweet.”
My friend said she never heard the phrase “conspicuous family” before adopting her son, but now thinks about it often. “It is a term I wasn’t aware of before,” she said. “You look at my family and it’s obvious he’s not my biological child. People notice us. Our experience, blessedly, has been so affirming. People see the light that’s in him, they love his smile. People are drawn to him.”
Being “conspicuous,” she said, has made her life much richer. She’s often approached by strangers who ask her to tell the story of her son’s adoption.
“Adopting a child of another race has been a bridge,” my friend says. “It’s a bridge between my family and people we never would have met otherwise. It’s a bridge between races and cultures.”
Her son — with his new hairstyle and smile — makes life brighter for my friend and his community. Bob Marley would be proud.
