Speaking of Invisibility

Today, I ate lunch next to a mother-daughter pair who I longed to connect with.  The mother was Asian and the daughter looked mixed-race.  I wanted to tell them about Mixed Chicks Chat, the podcast I co-host, but I couldn't bring myself to introduce myself and/or give them a card with information about the show.  Seated behind me was another multiracial family, an Asian father and a white mother, and cute baby girl about age 1.  I didn't say anything to them either.  I saw them very clearly as family, but I didn't want to draw attention to a difference that might not be meaningful to them.  And also I was gun shy.  Last week, who knows how I mustered up the nerve, but I did and handed a white woman with a light-brown young girl at the museum, a card for the show.  "Excuse me, I said, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to let you know about a show I'm involved with.  It's about being racially and culturally mixed."  The woman took the card, but kind of chuckled.  "Oh, well, I'll give this to her mother."  "Okay," I said embarrassed that I had suddenly brought up race and then my assumption that the white woman was her mother was wrong.  "Well," I said, "the show is for multiracial families and friends of . . . " You think I covered enough bases there?  That experience was definitely on my mind today, but also a lot of questions: did they think of themselves as a multiracial family?  Would they be upset if I recognized or identified them that way?  Did they, in the case of the two families today, see any similarity between my mixed-ness (black and white) and theirs (Asian and white)?  Now, I won't know.