Mark, 10 Weeks

Go trav­el­ing, mix a Chi­nese and a French and… Ta-da! You’ll get a Baby Dragon Mark. Okay, maybe not this exact model, ours is kind of unique –or so I like to think.

The first thing peo­ple com­ment on when I carry Mark in the sling is how much hair he’s got. This is usu­ally fol­lowed by “did you eat a lot of spicy stuff when you were preg­nant?” because appar­ently, that’s how the old wives’ tale goes—if you eat spicy foods dur­ing your preg­nancy (or have heart­burn), you’ll get a baby with a lot of hair. Go figure.

And for the record, yes, I love spicy foods but I didn’t expe­ri­ence heartburn.

“Oh my, look at these dark eyes!” is usu­ally the sec­ond com­ment. “Must be his Chi­nese side,” I some­time explain. “Baby boy is half Chinese.”

At this point, peo­ple usu­ally take a good look at me, a puz­zled look on their face. “His father is Chi­nese,” I add before they ask me if I adopted.

In Canada, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is a way of life and we have peo­ple from all over the world. Yet, inter­ra­cial cou­ples are still some­what a minor­ity. And in case of mixed Asian-White cou­ples, it’s more com­mon to see an Asian female with a White guy than the oppo­site, like us. Mind you, it’s not like we get strange looks or anything—people are just sur­prised. For instance, if we are queu­ing some­where, peo­ple usu­ally assume we are not together, these kinds of lit­tle things.

Mark is a new link between the two of us—a cute bira­cial baby we cre­ated by blend­ing some Chi­nese DNA, some French (and Mediter­ranean roots) DNA and mucho Cana­dian politeness.

Since he was born, both sides of the fam­ily are try­ing to fig­ure out which of his fea­tures are more clearly Asian and which ones are more White. The funny thing is, my fam­ily thinks he looks very Chi­nese and Feng’s par­ents point out his West­ern side. And of course, my par­ents want him to look Chi­nese (it’s exotic!) and Feng’s par­ents are delighted to see White fea­tures (same reason).

Poor kid.

Mark def­i­nitely has my hair in both colour and tex­ture: it’s cop­per coloured, soft and slightly curly. Like most Chi­nese, Feng’s hair is black and thick.

His skin is lighter than both of us, but maybe all babies have pretty white skin. I have olive skin (Mediter­ranean roots) and Feng is from North­ern China, his skin is fairly light as well. When we are tan though, we are both pretty dark so we will see how Mark will turn out!

Mark has big Chi­nese eyes—that’s the only way to describe them! This is maybe the best exam­ple of a “mix”. His eye­lids are Chi­nese, espe­cially when he smiles or laugh, yet he has some West­ern fea­tures includ­ing the fact his eye colour is not that dark and his eyes are fairly big.

Finally, he has my chin, a lit­tle pointy chin that peaks out below his chubby baby cheeks.

When I look at Mark, I see a mini-Feng but that could be because I asso­ciate a baby boy with his father.

Years ago, well before I even con­sider bak­ing a baby for real, one of my friends com­mented on the fact that Feng and I would prob­a­bly cre­ate an inter­est­ing mix. “But peo­ple would think I adopted!” I joked at the time.

I had always thought Asian genes would take over West­ern ones and deep down, I was slightly afraid that the baby may not look like me at all. I know, it’s silly—I find Asian babies lovely and I don’t think I’m espe­cially good-looking; it’s not like I wanted to have a “mini-me”. I think I feared that I would look like a stranger, not his mother. That the baby would look for­eign to me, that bond­ing may be harder.

I now real­ize how silly this sounds, because Mark is a real mix. Beyond any Asian fea­tures, West­ern fea­tures or both, he has our expres­sions and his own. Who care who he looks like the most! He is Mark, the bira­cial “inter­na­tional” baby.

And I love him for being a link between our respec­tive heritages.

Related arti­cles:

1. The United Nations At Home
2. Three Months… in Numbers!
3. Two Months Later—Pee, Smiles and the Month in Numbers
4. 10 Tips for Bet­ter Baby Pic­tures… With Examples!
5. The World: Meet Mark, Born 12÷10÷12!
6. Me, a Mommy? Seriously?