[peregrinerose]

My husband and I are white, our son is AA/H (and a great looking kid... sorry, had to throw that in :-) Fortunately, as a 15 year old, he had a LOT of say in the family that would adopt him, and he knew going into this that we lived in a very white area (rural PA). He feels that it's our hearts that matter, not race. He's comfortable in almost any setting and relates to others well. I'm so proud of him for having that kind of maturity.

We haven't had any racist issues at all, but some interesting scenarios. Standing in line for ice cream, he was behind us and the person taking our orders assumed we were not together... that was partly the race difference, but partly that he always tends to lag behind us. He was bothered by that, but understood that he didn't show with body language that we were all together due to his lagging behind as well.

One of our first weekend visits together, we were all in the car when my husband got pulled over for speeding. We heard frantic giggling in the back seat. When we asked him what was going on, he told us that he wanted to tell the cop that we kidnapped him, and the cop would believe it since we look different. He was just delighted at the mental image of that! And I admit, it was funny :-)

The third incident... we spend weekends skydiving, and are generally around the same 30 or so people every weekend. Everyone knows our situation. A couple of weeks ago, a new guy showed up to jump. I was in the plane sitting across from him and he was staring at me very intently. It started to make me uncomfortable, so I asked him what was up. He said "you know, the more I look at you, the more of your features I can see in your son." I played with him for a little bit on that, letting him give me a long list of ways we look alike. After I couldn't keep a straight face any more, I filled him in :-) My son and husband found that hysterical, and since my husband is very densely freckled, we all decided that our son has my facial features, and inherited Chad's freckles, just more densely populated :-)

Overall, the race difference has given us some good funny stories to tell, at least so far nothing negative at all. When it comes to college and scholarships, his race will actually be an asset.