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Kiss for luck | page 1, 2
I remember vaguely noting when my high school class was graduating. By then, I'd been two years in college, traveled to Europe, and was
working and living on my own. High school, and the people I'd known there, seemed very young and very far away. I was very young still, too young to know how young I was. With time my class's graduation did come to matter a little bit, after all, because there were so few other markers in my life and I'd left with such momentum and so few farewells. The school eventually gave me a diploma and a yearbook, which relieved my father to no end. By my own choice I'd stepped outside that world and neither seemed to belong to me. I missed the prom, too. For weeks we've been shopping. You have to understand, this girl doesn't go shopping. This girl doesn't care what she wears, as long as you can kick a soccer ball in it. This girl doesn't care what her hair looks like, as long as it's not in the way of the basketball. (She may be a head shorter, but she's got a heck of a hook shot.) I thought this would be an easy errand: Grab a pair of slacks, a new shirt, some shoes. Maybe give a dress a second look. Go home. Sallie Tisdale Sallie Tisdale's column appears on the Mothers Who Think site every other Thursday.
Love Sallie Tisdale? Read more at BARNES & NOBLE
We've gone to the mall, let's see now, a half-dozen times. It has been not quite tearful, only difficult. We've spent hours in stores laden with the teeniest skirts and blouses and form-fitting dresses designed for "Baywatch" girl guards, helped by young women who get a look at my daughter's luscious curves and startling height and can't decide which graduation she's attending. She's tried on an awful long stream of suggested items, most of which I ferry to her one at a time, catching glimpses of my own, let's be honest, matronly figure in faded jeans and wrinkled shirt, reflected in what must be funhouse mirrors. Going to these stores and watching these creamy beauties pose in front of the three-way mirrors is like being teleported to a planet of the tiny and thin and breathtakingly young. My shy daughter watches everyone and herself carefully, without comment. So far, we've bought slacks, a blouse, a blazer, shoes, socks, skirt, another blouse, necklace, earrings, stockings ... Suddenly she's one of the creamy ones, self-conscious, devastating. Suddenly it matters, it matters big time, this ceremony, this initiation, ritual, symbol, watershed, change. This is going onstage. This is being top dog of the school for a single night. This is the start of summer; this is her last chance to get up the courage to dance with the boy she has stared at all year. All these years, she's grown up slowly, carefully, with savor. I raced ahead, missing details, but she dawdles. "This is the last thing I do before I go to high school," she says in the car on the way home from the mall. Her voice drops to a whisper: "Which I have to do, even if I don't want to." Tonight's the ceremony, but it is all ritual to me now -- the confusion and insecurity, the dressing rooms, the difficult credit-card returns. The look on her father's face when he sees her dressed up in the short black skirt and tight, surprisingly low-cut red blouse she has decided to wear. I'm sure the actual graduation will be full of whispers and snorts of derision and giggles and perspiring, teary parents. After that, we'll say goodbye and get out of the way of the party and dance, drying tears, feeling the years and the losses, the goodbyes to come. But first: What are we going to do with her hair?
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