I forgot to mention dealing with our families.
By the time Mack & I met, my mother had been gone for 10 years.  She would have loved Mack.  They would have had fun sharing cooking tips and traditions.
Mack's family accepted me right away.  There were a couple sisters-in-laws and aunts who had reservations, but they never voiced them to me.  Everyone was respectful.  My mother-in-law, Mae Helen, and I hit it off right away.  We always talked a lot & shared things.  She told me once that she always thought of me as one of her children.  I was proud of that because we were such close friends.
Even going to the Hardin reunion was a positive vibe.  If anyone objected to me, they smiled and moved on.  I felt Mack's family knew not to cross Mack.

Now my family was quite different.  It was a year after Mack & I got together that I even decided to share my information.  I wanted to be sure the relationship would last.  I made a decision on my own to tell my family and some friends that Mack & I were married.  We were not, but I felt like my father or my ex-husband's 2nd wife might try to keep me from the kids because we were a mixed couple and because we were not married.  We were together 15 yrs. before we decided we needed to be married.  I certainly didn't want my kids to have to lie like that for me for a year.  So I told the lie & stuck to it.
When my father got the news about his daughter's choice of a man, I was visiting them in IA with cousin, Sandy.  Annamae (step-mother)  then began life as a go-between.  When I went to IA, I did not stay in Mt. Vernon.  I stayed at Gramma's house.  That was great because Gramma Remington and I were very close.  This way of visiting my family went on for 15 yrs....until my Dad died.   After that Mack went out to IA for visits, but was not really up for staying in Dad's house.  Mack became a part of my family then.

The 2nd Labor Day that we went to Holly Springs, MS, where Mack  was from, he took me to meet his mother.  Before leaving Memphis, TN to go out to the country, we stopped at Mack's sister's house, Carolyn.  She and her family were there.  It was the first time any of his immediate family down south had met me.
Everything went very well, but Carolyn was very  quiet & just stared. After we left, Carolyn called her mother, Mae Helen, to warn her that Mack was headed her way with a Mexican lady.
We began hanging together in 1980.  Back then, people were still skitish about mixed races being together.  There were a lot of questions asked.  Lots of little girls, especially, asked if they could touch my hair.  
If a stranger, drunk, or whatever asked me a stupid question about if I was black or not, I gave them stupid answers.  Like, what does it matter?,  or no, my great, great, great grandfather was Geronimo.  Really?  Yep.  They usually left with that.
If Mack & I stepped into a room with all black guys, and say Mack asked someone a question, that guy would look at me & shrug his shoulders.  Mack would say, don't worry about her, she's black.  Then it was ok for that man to talk street talk.
When we traveled or went out in a new area, Mack was very watchful.  If anyone stared at us too long, he would begin his own deathly stare.  One time it turned the man was his first cousin, and they were both giving each other their Hardin stare of death!  Mack was very protective in new areas.
After some years, we would see more & more mixed couples in cosmopolitan areas of the world.  Now we are all over.