My wife and I were driving our 2 1/2-year-old son, Asher, to school recently when he suddenly piped up from the backseat.

"Daddy, what color are you?"

My eyes went wide. I slowly turned to my wife. Marie's mouth was agape, as if someone had slapped her. She's Haitian-American and I'm pure Irish, so our charming and strong-willed Asher is what's called "biracial" these days. Or, as my mother-in-law once said, "halfie-halfie."

"Um, what do you mean, Ash?" I asked, stalling for time.

"You're white," he said.

It was the emphasis that made it sting. He made it sound as if he'd just found out I was an escaped convict.

My wife looked at me with sympathy, but after half a minute, she couldn't stand the suspense any longer. "And what color is Mommy?" she asked.

"Mommy's brown," Asher said, with great exactness.

My wife has always joked that light-skinned Asher will one day pass her off to his friends as the black maid. I saw a flicker of hurt in her eyes. We both sensed what was coming.

"And what color is Asher?" I asked.

He thought for a moment, and in the rearview mirror I saw him glance down at his bare arm. "Asher yellow," he said finally. Then he lost interest.

Someone on the playground or at his preschool had obviously seen me with Asher and said a few words. So now Asher had realized he was different from his mom and dad.

As we drove on, the car silent, a swell of emotion washed over me: Already? I thought. Really? I thought I had a few more years before we had to start talking about this. I felt for the first time what Americans must have experienced a hundred years ago during one of those terrible epidemics that swept from coast to coast: An invisible something had come through on the wind and brushed up against my son. I hadn't been able to protect him from it. Somehow I thought I would.

On most days, raising Asher isn't any different from raising any other child. Race doesn't matter when I'm trying to get him to pick up his toys or to be quiet, please, during that last two minutes of the football game. And Marie and I have it far better than interracial parents in the 1950s or even the 1980s. They did the heavy lifting.

But sometimes it is different.

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