Prom Night

Once she was a lapful of a girl. We read the same bedtime story over and over again about a mother and daughter who collected pennies and quarters in a great big jar. The mother was a waitress, I think, and worked tirelessly. She spilled the thumbprints of metal onto the table every night, and together they scooped them like favorite crumbs into their readied, bird catcher palms. From there, they tumbled the symphony of coins into the open mouth of the jar with a secure lid. You see, there was a big rose studded fabric chair they were saving up for, and by the close of the story they were bound for the furniture store. They bought that luscious rest of a long forthcoming fortune with their savings. They put it in the back of a pickup truck and climbed into it together as a helpful friend drove them straightaway toward home.


Tonight my girl will dress for the prom in black miniskirt wearing flashy shoes to offset the rainy spring air. She will pin a boutonniere of two white calla lilies with purple centers onto the lapel of her dark haired companion. They will wave farewell as they hoist themselves up into his tall ride, and they will drive to a northern resort named for a buffalo to eat penne pasta and dance a masquerade dance floor. I won't be in the back of the truck with them for this drive, but I will take old fashioned mother comfort in the simple sight of it - smile at the bumper sticker the driver has on the back of his truck window that reads, "Jeeps are sweet. Barbie drives one".


My daughter and I are beginning that crossover. That meshing of my still present memory of dating boys nearly twenty and her walking through the door and into those intimate rooms. I still make her breakfast in the morning and place it precariously on her bedside table with the hope that she might nibble at it between the application of the day's face and the last minute search for her cell phone under piles of clothes and pick up sticks of an environmental science project that's due. But there are many mornings that the food is left there on the small, square table, untouched. She is moving toward that place where she doesn't require me anymore. I read stories out loud to myself myself now sometimes. Sometimes there are enough quarters to feed the parking meter for a yawn of a slow splurge of a downtown stroll. I look in shop windows at rosy images of wishes for refurnishing my heart, my history, and my tomorrows. Sometimes I might even buy myself something, a greeting card with a picture of a winsome fish or orange splash of a peaceful, foreign monk leaning in a lit doorframe. The images themselves, like a favorite picture book, take me simultaneously backwards and forwards through the story.


There was a television show on a few nights ago in which there was a prom being planned and the lesbian class president, who was also nominated for prom king, decided that stairways to heaven or castles made of sand were altogether too saccharin for an event theme and declared that the night's room would be dedicated to dinosaurs. I suppose I am feeling that primitive call (yes, another way of saying that I am feeling old, I guess) as I charge my digital camera's battery, grateful I don't have to keep track of silver canisters of tightly rolled film, or not have to worry that I won't be able to find my child as the night grows long and thin as she is generally but a text message away. 


As Bob Dylan said, the times are a changin' (indeed). But perhaps too they just a tad still the same. Boutonnieres and miniskirts. Prom.


Of course, I will forever wish for her to crawl up next to me to cuddle. Forever wish to hear her ask me to read the bedtime tale one more time. Or two or three.