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I grew up in Indiana and saved a few thousand comic books in white boxes for the son I would have someday. You know how it is: we want to give our children the best moments of our own childhoods.

Despite my good intentions, we had to leave the boxes of yellowing comics behind when we moved to China. My wife made our boy a red cape instead, and I told him stories about the man of steel. He was 3. He ran down sidewalks, leaping with his hands up, which made me happy as a child myself. I wanted my son to love superheroes the way I had. Superheroes had taught me that anything was possible. There was nothing more American. I wished China had comic book stores.

Because he was born in Ethiopia and came to us as a stumbling, almost walking baby, I was especially disappointed when my son lost interest in Superman and his cape; he too had been sent as a baby from one world to another. Don’t you see yourself? I wondered.

And then I realized: all my childhood heroes were squarely white. They were so white, they never had just one WASP name, but two: Bruce Wayne, Donald Blake, Clark Kent, Steve Rogers, Reed Richards, Peter Parker . . . My son’s name is Dagim. How could I share my comics with my son and say, “Don’t you want to be like them?”

I often forget our son is adopted. He’s not the same color as his mother or me, which doesn’t matter so much to us, but around the time he turned 5, he started talking about it. He pointed out that he was darker than me and darker than Barack Obama. He’s the darkest person in his kindergarten class.

Why couldn’t the superheroes in my comics look like my son? There was only “The Black Panther” (not nearly as militant as his namesake, he wore a costume that did not show any brown skin) and Luke Cage, a Marvel blaxploitation character who wore a silk shirt open to his navel and told no one his real name because he had escaped from prison.

And then, in 2010, Marvel Comics presented a Spider-Man (the “Ultimate” version) who was 13 years old and brown. To see Spider-Man pulling his mask over a tiny brown chin – to see a boy with short curly hair sticking to the ceiling of his bedroom— well, something happened. Dagim has been Spider-Man for two Halloweens in a row. He takes a bath with his Spider-Man and a toy killer whale. He has Spider-Man toothpaste and a Spider-Man toothbrush. If Spider-Man offered medical coverage, I think he would want that, too.

My son somehow understands that there is a Peter Parker Spider-Man, who is vaguely grown-up and my age, and a younger Spider-Man, closer to his age. That’s just how Dagim likes it. He even understands that Peter Parker — like Superman, like Batman — wasn’t raised by his birth parents. The best superheroes were all adopted like him.

I thought for a while that my son would never be interested in my comics. I was afraid they would just represent another club he couldn’t join: all those big-jawed white guys with their hair parted to the side. But thanks to Spider-Man, my son imagines himself jumping on giant robots and saving the city. I hear him doing that behind the door of his room.

We live in Singapore now. At dinner tonight, Dagim asked me if Spider-Man really lives in New York City. He wanted it all to be real. In our atheism and indecision about Christmas, my wife and I had missed our chance to really get behind the Santa Claus story. I didn’t want to tell him there was no Spider-Man either.

“What color is Spider-Man’s costume?” I said.

“Red, white and blue.”

“Why do you think that is?”

He had no idea.

“Let me tell you about America,” I said. “It’s a place where anything is possible.”

Not long ago, my comic books felt as useless as those overlarge movie logo cups from fast-food places. As a child, you really think they are collectible. It’s only later that you realize they’re not “collectible.” They’re “impossible to recycle.” For a while, I thought my comics were similar junk. Now I’m glad I saved my comic books about people who do impossible things. My son wants to be one of them.

My childhood memories and my son’s fit together, one inside the other, like two plastic cups.

Maybe, like those cups, our memories will outlive us.