All Mixed Up
It was the late 60s and the Age of Aquarius. Even Jesus Himself had become a Superstar in a Broadway play by 1971. Everything felt so blissfully free when you were young, on a college campus. No technology to get in the way of organic relationships. There were no parents and their opinions. Music was free. Minds were free, and togetherness was almost mandatory. The war in Vietnam was still raging, with opinions still raging about its purpose. Most of all, LOVE was free for everyone who wanted it.
Until it wasn’t.
He was black, and she was white. It had begun as a struggle. Decades later, even I thought, “What were they thinking?” It was 1969, and civil rights were on everyone’s mind. Now, what would the parents of these two, almost innocent souls think? Still, free love had its way, and the love grew between them. Not just figuratively, but literally. Growing inside her now, like a future neither she nor he could escape. This child with a foot in two worlds, two cultures. All mixed up.
On a cold January day in 1970, the Lord blessed my parents with what they said was a beautiful caramel colored baby. That’s me. They did get married, brave souls, but eventually they both left the marriage and went on with their lives. I’m still here, in the relationship. There was no way out of the interracial marriage for me.
In general, life seemed fine for the most part. I acted like a kid, but one day, watching my mother run a brush through her long, luxurious, red locks. I looked in the mirror and wondered why I didn’t have THAT hair. I had a cute little ‘fro’ just like Michael in the Jackson 5, but I wanted my mom’s hair too. It didn’t seem fair if she was my mom that my hair would be so much different. I promptly asked her if I was adopted. Confusion loomed occasionally, and I was all mixed up. So it began. The Great Hair Adventure. To be continued in my teens…what a surprise!
Then, there were the dolls. None of those little faces resembled mine. I was, as I would be many times in my life, too black to be white, and too white to be black.
The latter cut through me like a knife the first time I was called a derogatory name by another black girl. I won’t repeat it, as it wasn’t worth repeating. “What are you?” was always the first question. To that, I answered them as if I owed them a genealogy report. It was so frustrating. It never occurred to me that I did not owe perfect strangers justification of my existence. Or “You’re mixed, aren’t you?” like that was a terrible thing. “Why you sound so white?” asked some kids. I had no idea what that meant. I spoke like everyone I knew. What the hell did they mean? Weren’t black folks MY people? The white people were supposedly NOT my people. Again, confusion hovered above me like a cloud, and I was all mixed up.
I also presented as a ‘not so typical teenager. At my awkward, self-doubting stage, it was the 80s. The age of excess and can’t get enough, loud music and big hair. Learning, as I grew up, to do my uncooperative hair in an age of no Internet videos, proved challenging. I took on the challenge with gusto, but humidity proved a formidable adversary living in the Pacific Northwest. I lived a normal existence as best I could despite various obstacles, which would deserve a Part 2 of its own, of whatever this is I’m writing. In retrospect, I did let myself down and went from straight As to quitting high school twice, in two different states, for reasons too numerous to list. As much as it galled me to get it, instead of the diploma I’d worked so hard for, I got my GED with all due haste.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a Part 2 of the Great Hair Adventure. In my 30s I gave up and my wig phase began. FINALLY…the luxurious locks! Victory is mine! I enjoyed tossing my hair around, oh yes ,I did ,girl! Next, in my 40s came the “cut it really short” phase to better facilitate the wig dynamic I’d created for myself. Now, in my 50s I rarely wear ‘hair’ as I call my wigs now.
I had my son in ’93, and he was a gift from God from the moment I knew I was pregnant. It occurred to me how I would answer his inevitable questions about what it meant to be of mixed race. I only got 11 years, 9 months, and 12 days to find out because God took him back for reasons a mother will never understand when the loss makes you numb and angry. I concentrated on the fact that God lost his only son too, and that got me through the most painful and immediate pain. My son had a faith you rarely see in children. It was solid and unwavering. Poems he wrote described heaven in ways a child shouldn’t understand, in words that move adults to tears. Some of those words are on his tombstone, and they still comfort me. Losing him made me angrier than I’ve ever been in my life, and it took years for me to look for God’s hand in my life again. Drowning in grief is different for everyone. I got through with God’s help and by coming to really know Jesus, and now I seek out the good in people the way He did. It also makes me thankful for every minute God gives me on this Earth.
I embrace my short curly hair like never before. I hold dear my curves and my caramel skin.
At 56 in 2026, no one asks me what I am anymore. Dolls come in every color of the rainbow. There are also colors in the crayon boxes that represent EVERYONE. I finally figured out what people I belong to. I don’t belong to white people. I don’t belong to black people. I belong to God’s people, and that’s all that matters. I’m no longer all mixed up, and no one has to explain that.
BIO:
Mia Lott Westfall is a writer and mixed-race Gen Xer who grew up navigating the in-between. Her work explores identity, family history, and what it meant to come of age in a generation that rarely had language for being mixed. Based in Missouri, she writes to create space for stories that didn't always get to be told.
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