I can’t help it. Anytime Dan and I see a mixed Asian-Caucasian couple out with their baby, I can’t help, but look and imagine what if we had a baby and what would he or she look like. Lately, we’ve been talking about trying, which when I actually think about it, becomes much too overwhelming. My mind starts racing with millions of questions. Am I ready to be a mother? Am I going to be able to be a good one? Will I enjoy being a stay at home mom? I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about my career, am I willing to give up the possibility of redeeming it anytime soon? But that just isn’t what this post is supposed to be about. I’m sure there’s much too much of similar raw material to write future posts.

Anyway, with the hype of Lipstick Jungle, I saw the first episode and became very curious about the gorgeous Lindsay Price. Doing a little research on IMDb under the trivia section of her profile, I discovered that her mother is Korean and her father is German-Irish. Included in the trivia section, however, was a list of other Happa actors and actresses, some of whom I was very surprised to find were of mixed ethnicity. This, of course, led me to spend the next hour looking up each and every one with a few minutes in-between wondering, “Will my baby look like him, or her, or him?”

Idyllically speaking, both Dan and I agreed that it’d be wonderful to have a boy first and then a girl, so that the boy could look out for his little sister. I’m an older sister with one brother and Dan is an older brother to his younger brother. I’ve sometimes wondered if my influence on my brother was detrimental. I understand that kids are resilient, but to this day, I can’t help but feel bad for the way I used to treat him when we were young. In fact, if you were to take him aside to this day, and ask him about his childhood, it’s a little too easy for him to tell you about the abuse I put him through—teasing him, forcing him to play girly games, making him cry when I would run away from him. Dan and his brother seemed to have a much better relationship. It probably helped by the fact that they’re so close in age and while they were growing up his mother ran a daycare from home, so at least there were always other kids to cushion the comfort zone between the two. But you can never plan these things. Boy or Girl, it doesn’t really matter because it’ll be our baby. This is all to say that I was really interested in the actors from the Happa list; they’re ethnicities, what they look like…

I was surprised to find these two actors on the list:

I always thought that Russell Wong was simply Asian. Perhaps I never thought him to be otherwise, because all the movies I had ever seen him in were with a predominantly Asian cast and the fact that he does, indeed, look very Asian. (His father is Chinese-American and his mother is Dutch-American.) It’s a funny thing, because with the few Happa kids I’ve known and seen, I tend to think they look more Caucasian than Asian.

Just before going to bed the other night, Dan and I ended up talking about this very thing. Both of us blurted out, “Wow, it’d be great if we had a son that looked like Russell Wong!” Dan casually added, “I do have some Dutch blood in me.” On the other hand, there’s Rob Schneider whose mother is Filipino and father is German-Jewish-American. (Aren’t blue eyes a recessive gene and where does the curly hair come from?) I have to admit that given the two, I’d hope that if I had a son, he’d tend to look more like Russell than Rob. But again, like I said before, in the end it doesn’t matter, because he’ll be our baby.

One other surprise. Mark Paul Gosselaar is also Happa. His mother is Indonesian and his father is Dutch. Apparently, he dyed his hair blond to play the part of Zach Morris on Saved by the Bell. Who knew? Hmmm…I guess it’d also be ohhhh-kay if my baby grew up to look like teen hearthrob, Zach.

One of my greatest fears about having a baby is he or she won’t look like me. My anxieties only heightened when I was told about a friend’s birth of her daughter. She’s a beautiful Korean girl with dark brown-black hair and pale light colored skin who has lived in the States for the last twenty years. She met her Caucasian blond-haired husband while in college. Apparently, when their daughter was born, the baby’s features were so light-colored that another friend of mine wondered whether my Korean friend was in the room at the time of conception! My Korean friend really is the mother!

Talking with a friend of mine who’s also in a mixed marriage, she mentioned that we’ll just have to be at peace with the idea that our children might very well not look like us.  However I believe that at the end of the day, when my baby hugs me and says, “I love you, Mommy,” it won’t really matter.