Mom, Dad, I want you to meet him. I think we're in love.

I was riding home from a soccer game with my parents and my older brother. I asked my parents,  "Mom, Dad...I just wanted to tell you I met a guy from Zimbabwe and we've been talking a lot. I want you both to meet him. I think we're in love."

At first my parents were incredulous because they wondered how I could meet and fall in love with a guy so quickly. It was the first month of my junior year and it was a month after I broke up with another guy-an all-american type from Michigan. 

"Are you serious?" my mom asked.

"Yeah mom, I want him to come home for Thanksgiving."

"Well," my dad said, in all of his wisdom, "Is he a Christian? Does he treat you right?"

"Yes. He's great," I replied. 

"Thats fine by us. Thats all we ask."

"So its no big deal he is from Zimbabwe?" I asked them.

"No, I dated a mulatto girl in high school," my Dad said.

"You did?" I asked. My brother and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. My Dad always kept his life so secret. Apparently my mom was surprised as well.

My mother quickly piped in, "The only thing I ask is that he doesn't take you back to Zimbabwe because then you would be really far away."

Her comment was so typical of my mother. Her only concern was proximity and had nothing to do with skin color.

"Well thats cool," I said, "You don't have to worry about that because I just made that all up." 

With that, I turned back around in the front seat and told them it was a question posed by a web writing class I am in. It was an experiment in racial differences. I think they passed. I was quite thankful to be raised in a family that would let me marry someone from Zimbabwe, or Korea, or Brazil, or anywhere really. 

The country has come a long way in terms of racial reconciliation, and a conversation with my family on the way back from a soccer game is proof.