Another Chapter Begins

From the time they're born, little girls are conditioned to be princesses. Pink clothes, hair bows, oohs and ahhs and attention to every detail, little girls are women in the making and it is a task I have dedicated my adult life toward.

Okay, maybe not the Princess part. I'll admit that I have put out subtle messages that princesses are annoying at best, and nauseating to the general population on a daily basis. But that does not mean that I don't expect manners and (attempted) grace from my girls. My parting instructions to them whenever we are out in public are so ingrained in their psyche that now all I have to say to them is, "Do I even need to say it?" They know the drill. Their standing orders are to be on their very best behavior, and we must be doing something right because my relatives all think that my kids handle adversity with alacrity and aplomb, never an argument in sight.

This is the part where I could go into detail about Abby and Linzie's habit of fighting in secret so they can work out their differences without getting punished, or about how any one person's "tone" can start an argument that sucks in the entire family like a black hole suffering from PMS, but today I'm talking about illusions so let's put those little details back under wraps and continue the fairytale.

For a teenage girl, a high school dance is the equivalent of going to the ball and every one of them want to be Cinderella. For the last 13 years I have known the day might come when I would have to manage a financial miracle in order to afford gowns, shoes and the other glamorous necessities but as it turns out, knowing about a possibility and accepting the inevitable are entirely different. I was about to be thrust into a world that made as much sense to me as the Mad Hatter, and I had to figure out how to keep a smile on my face so I would not ruin the experience for my giggling girls.

As luck would have it, two of my girls decided that they would like to go to Sweetheart's dance at their high school. Once we got past the elaborate ritual of "ask and answer" (tradition mandates that this be done completely in secret, and preferably under the cloak of night for some silly reason), it was time to start laying out the cash for dresses, flowers, purses, jewelery, shoes, day activities, dance tickets, pictures, and dinner...whew! My bank account balance was in a free fall and I had a nifty new habit of wringing my hands and scrunching my brow every time I heard the words, "Mom, when can we go shopping?"

Ugh, shopping!

I cannot explain why I was born without the shopping gene, but trust me when I say that I absolutely despise anything having to do with the mall or dressing rooms and because of this genetic deficiency I was completely hyperventilating at the thought of hours and hours of gown and accessory shopping looming over me.

Couldn't I have a nice, relaxing tax audit instead?

In spite of my inner turmoil, with a forced smile and lots of deep breathing, I managed the pushy sales women, over crowded dressing areas, and maneuvering through the closet-sized jewelry store. Someone should have offered me a medal of honor at that point! I was so delighted that I could have burst out in a shopper's rendition of "Hallelujah" because only the shoes remained and that would be a piece of cake, right?


shoe /ʃu/ Show Spelled [shoo] Show IPA noun,plural shoes, (especially British Dialect) shoon; verb,shod or shoed, shod or shoed or shod·den, shoe·ing.
–noun
1. an external covering for the human foot, usually of leather and consisting of a more or less stiff or heavy sole and a lighter upper part ending a short distance above, at, or below the ankle.

Note that nowhere in that definition does it say elusive, difficult to find, or nonexistent. In fact, there are billions and billions of shoes in this world and more are being manufactured every day! With dozens of stores to choose from, all within  a 4 mile radius of our home, shoe shopping should have been a breeze! Okay, so 50% of it WAS a breeze. Here's how it went with Madi's shoes, "Look, Madi, these are shoes that will cover your feet and just like your dress, they are black. Ooh sparkles!" Ring them up. Done. Ka-Ching!

However, if you know my Emily, then you know that nothing she does is ordinary or expected, including shoe shopping. While I had images of sensible heels, or an elegant slipper, Emily was dreaming of Green High Top Converse.

 As Carley and I gently tried to persuade her into pretty straps and bright pinks, Emily was turning her nose up at anything that would dare to show her toes and shooting down suggestions faster than Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral. Two days before the dance I actually considered the Converse because I didn't want my girl to go barefoot! By the time we entered store number six, I was ready to buy anything that even slightly interested her, and that is how she ended up with very expensive,gravity defying high-heeled shoes that made her date look vertically challenged and were destined to be abandoned almost as soon as the dancing started.

Ahh the things we do for our children!

The day of The Dance arrived and after their day activities, my girls began their primping in such a way that made me think of tribal rituals. The table was covered with beautification tools and us helpers were standing at attention. Let the process begin!

• Beautiful gowns? Check!
• Hair curled, pinned and sprayed in place so that even a tornado could not displace a single glossy strand? Check!
• Glamor makeup? Check!
• A tiny hint of perfume? Check!
• Perfect shoes and accessories? Check and Double Check! 
 

I stood back, camera in hand, taking pictures of my little girls who suddenly didn't look so little anymore and I asked myself, "Did I allow this to happen? What have I done?" Yes, they looked perfectly stunning, magnificently beautiful... but I was not prepared for the feeling of  my babies slipping away from me and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to scoop them up and whisk them back in time.

 

 

The girls had a great time at the dance(sans expensive shoes) and when they came home we laughed together as they shared their adventures with the rest of us. We all went to bed exhausted that night, long past midnight (eat your heart out, Cinderella!) and more than a few of us slept in the next day.

I'm still struggling with the strangeness of feeling that I dressed them up like brightly colored exotic birds, or offerings for some quirky tribal ritual. It completely goes against my instincts as a mother to help my daughters achieve this sophisticated look when they are still just little girls in my eyes.


We're not Amish, and I don't think either of them would dress as a nun, but at the very least there should be an instructional video full of coping techniques to ease me gently into this new chapter of life!