Prom Night

Saturday was a red-letter day here, in a parental sort of way. Although our involvement was limited to merely advisory (and financial), it is the sort of thing that makes you recognize that life goes on.

It was Junior-Senior Prom for the twins.

The activity actually started weeks ago with our daughter searching for a dress. Our son was a bit less worried, tuxes being secondary in the fashion world. While her quest for the perfect dress covered several cities (her incredibly patient boyfriend in tow, a testament to the stamina of young love), one has to think that the boy would have gotten up on Saturday, tried to put on his suit from last year and recognized, “Oh, I guess it doesn’t fit any more.”

Well, maybe not that causal, but you get the idea.  After all, clothing for the guy is an afterthought.  He knows it's going to be uncomfortable, and the primary requirement is that it has to match the girl's dress.  He's hamstrung until she's made a decision and communicated that to him.

In our family, the big crisis came a couple of weeks ago. Finding a dress was an early success. It was then sent home with the boyfriend so his tux could match appropriately.

The day she went to bring it home from his house, though, it was raining and she lost her grip on the hanger and the dress went into the mud.

Not a nice clean water puddle, but into a puddle of red mud. The kind that doesn’t come out of the knees of your 7 year olds jeans.

Mud and gauzy fabric are apparently mortal enemies that instantly lock together in combat. Fortunately, her mom was on hand to address the situation and avert the crisis. Mom’s have magical powers to do all kinds of things, especially if you don’t watch what they’re doing while they do it.

The dress came clean without a trace.

Prom pics are harder than wedding pics because there’s not necessarily an expectation of anything that will continue beyond the big dance. We’d not even met our son’s date before they all showed up for the paparazzi parade at our house.  They're "just friends" and we may well never see her again, a shame because she was an absolute delight.

The pics are more complicated because after coming to our house they had to go do pics at the young lady’s house.  Then over to the respective houses of the couple who were riding with them for the same thing.  Then there's a requirement that they drop by their friend's houses so the faux parents that have been involved in these kids lives since grade school can take THEIR pictures of them all together. 

It‘s not inconceivable that the preparation and picture taking lasted longer than the Prom itself which, by all accounts, was “lame” because “they didn’t play any good music.” 

This seems to be the lament of prom-goers through the ages, since 3 cave men started beating on a rock and grunting rhythmically while their adolescents donned their best long tiger skin pelt or loin cloth and gyrated around the fire.

The after-party, however, got rave reviews. Other than to discern that the place was acceptable and chaperones appropriate for an overnight event, we haven’t asked a lot of questions in that regard. The assumption is that since no police or medical personnel were involved it was a safe and sane.

As milestones go, we’ve passed another one successfully.  It's hard not to feel proud when you see your kids all grown up, wearing adult clothes, holding the umbrella and door for their dates (well, sometimes with a bit of prompting). 

And then you realize that the future's going to be OK.  They're not quite there yet, but they'll be ready to head out to explore the world soon.  And it'll be fine.