Beautiful piece … from a white-skinned father to his black-skinned son

Josh Bottomly sent me his response to the election … It’s beautifully written.
It begins like this:

I am a white-skinned father with a black-skinned son.
A little over a year ago, my wife, Amy, and I adopted our son, Silas, from Ethiopia.
Silas turns two in December.
Today our conversations tend to revolve around our favorite snacks – yogurt and lemon pound cake at Starbucks – and favorite TV characters and movies – Elmo and Ratatouille. We also squabble very little these days. Sometimes Silas will take a swing at me when I take away the Wii joystick. And other times he’ll treat the cheese sandwich I made him for dinner like a Frisbee.
One day, though, Silas will want to talk about other things.Like the color of his skin. And my skin. And his mother’s skin. And pictures and events and people and dates he finds in his history textbook.
There are some historical dates I don’t want to explain to Silas then. August 12th, 1955, for example. That’s the day Emmett Till, a 14 year old boy, was brutally lynched in Mississippi by white, southern, “Christian” men.
… But then there are days I can’t wait to explain to Silas.
Days like December 1st, 1955. The day when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. That small, defiant “no” reverberated out into a large, defiant “no more.”
There are other days, too. Like August 28th, 1963. The day Martin Luther King delivered his famous message, “I Have a Dream.” It was a day unlike any other day. It was a day of dreaming of another kind of America.
And now there is November 4th, 2008.
This is a day I look forward to telling Silas about – not as a student of history, but as a participator in making history.
And I will tell Silas this: I voted for Obama. For you. For me. For us.

To read the rest – and see a family photo – go here.