Blending In

I have always tried to blend in

Be the same as everyone else

It’s easy to do because I am not brown, beige or yellow

I am not in a wheelchair or walk with a seeing-eye dog

My hair is golden brown, now tinged with grey and my eyes are hazel

You might pass me by and not even glance twice

In school, I thought that blending in meant eating Kraft Dinner

but we always had dinner cooked from scratch, not a box

My father pierced my ears at the kitchen table with a large needle that he sterilized with a lighter

He put an ice cube on my lobe for the pain

That was normal at my house

When I brought friends home, I cringed when my grandmother spoke to me in Hungarian

I knew she could speak a little English; she watched General Hospital every day on TV

She loved Dr Kildare best

He was dreamy but little did we know he was also trying to blend in

He had a secret

My family had lots of secrets

I could speak English perfectly without an accent but my parents couldn’t

My mother would always mix up her pronouns: Can you give me the number of the man that cleans your windows? I’d like to give her a call.

Hungarian has only gender-neutral pronouns so I guess she was ahead of her time

It always made me chuckle

Little did she know that her granddaughter would marry a woman, who then became a man and they would have a child via the sperm of another

Well now I’ve seen it all, she might have said. At least he’s not black.

My father wouldn’t let me get married in the backyard

We wanted a small Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi but my father didn’t want to let the neighbours see

You never know who’s looking, he said. It’s better to be safe than sorry

Years later he would try to talk my daughters out of having a Bat Mitzvah by bribing them

He didn’t understand that it wasn’t about the money

He tried all of his life to blend in

He learned that having to wear a yellow star meant you couldn’t blend in anymore but he tried even harder after that

I married a Jewish man but I never really understood what that meant

My children would be Jewish and the lineage would continue

Until they married and had their own children and so it would go

We will not stand out by the colour of our skin, or the shape of our eyes

We carry a very tiny seed of genetics

We will never really blend in if you look at us underneath a microscope

My granddaughter stands out because of her golden yellow hair, deep blue eyes and innocence

Her father has black hair and dark eyes

Sometimes people stare at them because they do not look alike

But I am filled with wonder and gratitude

When I look at her, I remember that blending in is not always the best choice

Standing in what you are is the best choice,

no matter what colour that might be