Day 15: Prom Dress

I never planned on going to my senior prom. I hadn't been to my junior prom or eighth grade semi and had only gone to a Friday night dance once in seventh grade. Even though I took ballet lessons every day after school, I never considered myself a dancer, at least not the type that would feel comfortable on a public dance floor. In spite of my qualms, when a friend asked me to be his date for the prom I said yes and pretended that I didn't care that I'd been asked out as early as September.

I later discovered that after asking me to the prom, the same guy had asked out two other girls who I happened to be friends with. You'd think if he was going to ask three different girls to the prom he'd at least have the decency or common sense to ask three girls who weren't friends. When we discovered his faux pas, we all turned him down and decided to go together in a statement of solidarity and to prove that we didn't need a date to have a good time.

My mother was just as surprised as I was that I would be going to my prom, and she excitedly planned a day for us to go dress shopping. Back then there were rows of dress shops bordering route one-- the highway near where we lived.  I rolled my eyes and scowled at the over-zealous store employees who were much too excited to fit me for a prom gown. After standing humiliated in the third store's dressing room while the sales associate stuffed falsies into my dress top and passed me mid-section baring dress after dress despite my refusal to try them on, I declared that I was going to make my own gown instead. Probably picturing the black duct tape ensemble I would have created (and it would have looked beautiful by the way, I was and am quite crafty) my mother drove me to the mall so I could disappear into the rows of dresses in a department store where you had to flag down someone just to open the dressing room for you.

I'm pretty certain the only dress I tried on in the store was the one pictured above. It was strapless, fluorescent green, layered with bright blue tulle, and embroidered with blue beads on the bodice and down the right side. It couldn't have been further from my norm which involved jeans, a long sleeve shirt layered beneath a t-shirt with an 80s cartoon print design, and a black zippered hoodie. I wore dark muted colors and long sleeves even in the summer time. When I put the dress on I couldn't help but laugh at my reflection in the dressing room mirror. A stranger said that I'd certainly "stand out" at the prom. My mother asked if I was sure this was the dress I wanted. I said yes and her "okay" told me that it was ridiculously out of character, but equally as worn down from the previous dress store experiences, she conceded and we went to a cash register.

I decided to hand make my own purse since I hadn't had the opportunity to make my own gown. I embroidered blue felt with bright green ribbon flowers and sewed beads in the same pattern as those on my dress. I bought multicolored yarn to crochet the handle. Growing up, I never had many friends and spent most of my free time reading or teaching myself hand crafts.  By the time I graduated from high school I could embroider, crochet, knit, basket weave, bead, macrame, and jewelry make. 

At the prom, I refused to eat dinner and made a sad face out of the food that was given to us-- lamb, overcooked vegetables, and potatoes. The tables were cleared away and hundreds of students piled onto the classroom sized dance floor. I lasted about five minutes on the parquet before my friend's date started dancing inappropriately against me and I slipped away through the side door in search of solitude.  I spent the remainder of the night sitting by the coffee canister, pouring cup after cup. The high school junior who I would marry years later found me sitting alone and ditched his girlfriend to spend the night drinking coffee and talking to me. Neither of us was ever able to remember what we said in the hours we sat together that night.

Last week when a guidance counselor at the school where I teach-- the same school I graduated from ten years ago-- sent out an email asking if anyone had an old prom dress to donate, I immediately responded. I went back to my parents' house this weekend for mother's day and knew that my prom dress would still be hanging in their attic beside my wedding dress and every dance costume I ever wore from age three to eighteen (my parents would benefit from a 24 things or two.)  With a few extra wrinkles, it looked exactly as it did ten years ago.

Recently, someone said that when you try to make change the universe often conspires to allow it. I'm finding that when you want to let go, the universe open its arms wide and upturns its hands.