I rarely thought about race, but people regularly want to talk about it around me, so I learned to think about it. This started when I was a baby with my mom and sister, in the grocery store. “Oh, my goodness, they’re darling… Where did you get them?” The pairing of white and black, vanilla and chocolate, coffee and cream, of my mother and father, created an anomaly that people, often strangers, can’t help but ask… What are you? Where are you from? Unsolicited, from many races on a regular basis. I wanted to understand what they were seeing. That rabbit hole led me to the horror show that is the social construct of race in America. This journal of stories, songs, poems and other musings is helping me to process that my existence has been racialized, often without permission, throughout my lifetime.