I did not steal my baby

I am what I think people call olive skinned. My hair is brown, my eyes a greeny hazely mish mash and my skin looks a bit tanned. If I go into a Turkish shop it is assumed I am Turkish  If I go into a Greek shop it is assumed I am Greek. Italians speak Italian to me. Spaniards speak Spanish to me. When I get in a taxi the driver nearly always ask me where I'm from and the answer London doesn't suffice. When I can't be bothered to play ball and they say "No, I mean where are your parents from" I say London again. If they go back another generation I say London a third time. Then they stop which is a shame because if they went back another generation they'd begin to get the answers they are looking for. 

My daughter on the other hand is currently blonde. I don't mean currently as in she has taken to dyeing it regularly - she is ten months old so hopefully that's several years and much teenage angst away - but it started dark, turned blonde and who knows what it'll be next. 

Regular readers will know I have a slight obsession with risk, abduction and the cases of Ben Needham and Madeleine McCann. And I have been thinking about the language used around these cases and in particular the idea that gypsies might have stolen a blonde child. And I wonder whether people look at me and my blonde baby when we are out and about and wonder if we are really mother and daughter especially when people comment on her colouring. "My husband is fair" I tell them, "and so were both my grandmothers" as if I must justify the genetic heritage of my baby. And whilst losing a child to abduction must really be the worst thing possible, I do feel terribly sorry for the gypsies and other dark skinned people who may also have blonde children and who face suspicion because of it. 

Related posts:
Choosing between risks
The risks you dare not take
Searching for lost children

Privates by name, private by nature

When I was pregnant a number of people asked me whether we would be having the baby circumcised. "Only if it's a girl" was my stock answer. Yeah, I know, jokes about female genital mutilation are beyond the pale, but really, fascinating as the subject is and willing as I am to have a generalised discussion about the subject and my views on whether or not it should be carried out, I was a bit agog that anyone thought that an individual case was their business. 

For a family where one or both parents are Jewish (me, in this case) circumcision obviously comes up in discussions about the unborn child. But I see it as a highly personal issue, and one in which the child deserves privacy. Should I feel able to ask you about your genitals and what they look like? Of course not. So why did so many people think that they had a right to know about my child's? The euphemism 'privates' which we have settled on when talking about those parts, describes both the parts and their nature. 

Yet I wasn't sure how to articulate this without having an argument with anyone who asked. Until my dad gave me a great line to say the next time it came up - "When my son is old enough to decide whether he wants you to know what his penis looks like then you can ask him." Or rather, you can ask me whether you can ask him, though depending on your relationship with us and how old he is, the answer will very likely be no. 

It's a great line. I've never used it though - we had a girl.