I come from a very poor family in Mexico, and we were so poor that we didn’t have anything to wear. My grandmother, when times were really hard, had a dress made out of tablecloth, and I still own this dress. I found it in a very surprising way because I had this dress when I was a little girl,  and I thought that it had been thrown into the trash because it was so old and made out of tablecloth that I just didn’t think anybody would keep it.  One time when I was in my 20s, I went to visit my grandmother, and she didn’t have money for pillows so she would stuff a pillowcase with old clothes. I slept on her pillowcase, and it was so uncomfortable that I opened the pillowcase just to take a few things out of it.  That dress was in there, and that’s how I found it. I was so surprised that she kept that dress. I brought it back with me to the United States as a reminder of where my life started. Once in a while I look at that dress, and I think about all the things that I didn’t have. Now this is where I’ve come now in terms of succeeding in this country, becoming a published author, and now I can buy my daughter all the dresses that I want to buy her because I think of myself as a little girl when all I had was a dress made out of tablecloth.

Learn more: www.my-america.org

Relationship:  Im/migrant who arrived as a child Im/migrant who arrived as a child