Alongside many others I share a general inclination towards refraining from discussing -- let alone making textual soliloquies about -- hijab unless it's lightweight fashionista-ing. But I'll bend the rule a little bit for the sake of wondering aloud as to whether the tendency to want to reduce women to the definition of their dress doesn't speak more about a tendency among some to want to express a full definition of themselves through their dress: costume that denotes whole lifestyles, backgrounds, tastes in music, political affiliations, and ways of spending a Friday night. Talk to someone considering themself authentic about punk apparel versus wannabe-wear. Catch wind of a debate about the legitimacy of Jay-Z wearing a Che t-shirt on MTV. Emblazen a Confederate flag, or a Palestinian one, or a rainbow one, across the front of a cap -- just watch out if you combine the three. A woman bearing covered hair's clothes say much clearly defined about her not because they say much clearly defined about her but because of the desire within other cultures and subcultures to have their clothes act as protected emblems of their entire worlds.

The sixteenth spelled my son's first birthday. The seventeenth spelled six men filing in a row into my home, eyes cast between the baby and the floor, each politely refusing the food and drink politely insisted upon them, leaving behind traces of balloons and clothes sized a half year large, toys, tissue paper, selections alien to most of their fingers and left without specifically being offered and largely without a word.

And the thing is, it was nice.