pink tutus and yellow hair

Last week my mother told me a little story about my childhood. When I was very little I went to daycare at the Thueringer home. There were a lot of kids at this daycare, and all of them were white. All of them except for me. Apparently I came home one day and said, "Mommy, I'm brown." I was maybe 3 or 4. She told me that she would never forget that day.

I can remember growing up knowing I was brown. I remember in ballet, we were the Rainbow Ballerinas, all of the girls were given pastel tutus- light pink, mint green, soft yellow, lavender - except me. I was bright red. I will never forget Amanda, and her pretty pink tutu, with her blond hair and blue eyes, when she pointed at me and said "You have to be red because you are brown. Only white girls get pink." I tried to argue with her, but honestly what did I know? I was brown and that was my first (and only) ballet class. Maybe she knew something about ballet that I didn't. Maybe in Ballet you had to be white with blue eyes and yellow hair if you were going to wear pink. Stupid pink tutus.

Eventually, I was like everyone else. My skin isn't that dark and frankly the further into adulthood I got, the more the girls I knew went tanning and were my color or darker than me anyway. I just fit in and my tan skin became the norm. I stopped thinking about being brown, because I just wasn't that different.

Now, after years of spending my summers indoors under the florescent lights of my grey walled cubicle, my skin is definitely "olive" but not so brown. My eyes turned greenish from a run-in with the sun at Disneyland. I typically dye my hair a little lighter than it's natural black.

As I am preparing myself to walk into the geneticist appointment on Wednesday, I am sitting here thinking that once again, there is this brown smeared over what "should" have been white. I'm still not fit for pink tutus.

But I make red look good. Blue eyed girls, with yellow hair, may look awesome in Pink, but it takes brown to really rock the red.

(and no matter how sick this stupid birth control makes me, I will rock the red. No stupid disease is going to tell me what I can and cannot be. Today I have managed to keep down just water. I hate most food today... and I cannot tell you how gross dairy and meat are. Seriously. I can't even have them near my face or I will lose it).