A Fashion Brief

There is a page on Facebook for just about every collection of people imaginable.  I love how social media has given people the chance to gather and offer support with hundreds or even thousands of miles between them.  The group that has helped me the most in the last year is for people enduring the I-601 (Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility) process.  We talk about our hopes and fears knowing that the other people in the group have the ability to understand what we are going through.

I need to be able to talk to someone about how I can’t buy the new shoes that Liliana so desperately needs, without some idiotic response about how they simply can’t buy a new iPad until next week because they’re totally tapped out.  I mean how does the fact that my daughter needs shoes because the old pair finally fell to pieces have to do with your sudden longing for a new iPad?  Maybe I want an iPad too, but I know the difference between wanting something and needing something.

It’s important that I don’t have to explain why I live with my parents and can’t get any state or federal assistance.  We all need someone to lean on that will not make a snap judgment based on what their father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate had to say last Tuesday after such-and-such Politian voiced their opinion on something which they interpreted as gospel.

I was having a horrible day when I tuned into my Facebook support group.  The conversations were interesting, but there was one in particular that caught my attention.  One of the ladies had been looking at the NAMUS website and posed a question to the group about Hispanic men and their apparent love of fashion bikini briefs.  That observation was the start of one of the most entertaining conversations I ever participated in and it pulled me out of my dark mood like nothing else had been able to.  We spoke of plain, colorful, and animal print bikini briefs (particularly the zebra prints bikinis worn by an ‘acquaintance’ of one of the group member from back before she was married).  We debated the reason for the bikini briefs and discovered another thing we all had in common; the introduction of boxer shorts into our men’s wardrobe.  There were several points during that discussion where I laughed until I had tears streaming from my eyes!

I truly appreciate each and every one of you, the I-601 ladies.  I hope that zebra print will live on and make us all smile on our darkest days.

“I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.”

― Shel Silverstein “The Zebra Question”

Ciao