By Esther C. Baird (for wickedlocal.com May 2022)
It was 11 pm a time when, like all exciting moms, I am normally long asleep. But instead, I was staring down my driveway at 64 teenagers. Let me repeat that, I said sixty-four teenagers. They were all in formal prom attire, walking towards me like a slow motion Abercrombie ad, covered in glitter, make-up and enough sweat to melt my steep driveway, which otherwise is the first thing to freeze in Boxford.
“What have we done?” I whispered to my husband.
He had a giant smile plastered on his face. “No clue. What was your plan for having them all get changed, and outside to the pool?”
My plan!? I had a teenage wasteland walking up my driveway. What plan was there in the world that could handle that?
It’s just, our eldest daughter, a high school senior, hadn’t been to a prom thanks to Covid. So when it became clear that it was happening this year, I found myself agreeing to, well, everything.
Could the senior girls get ready at our house? Sure! Could I handle the prom venue floral centerpieces? You betchya! Could the after-prom be at our house for pizza and a pool party till 1 am or so? Of course, how hard could it be!?
I agreed to 24 hours of prompalooza.
And yet, here is a short list of things I know nothing about: formal makeup and hair, floral arrangements, and lastly how to handle 60+ teenagers who needed to change out of dresses and tuxedos into bathing suits, in a PG sort of way, in our house.
By the time the danced-out, sweaty, (but so very glittery) kids walked up our driveway, all the hair and flowers had been managed and the prom had been a success.
Regular Readers will know I often despair over my dinner fairies, but thankfully, I have a floral fairy. My friend and I hit up a few Trader Joes, and then spent the morning before prom in my kitchen with buckets of flowers I couldn’t name if I tried.
She snipped, filled and arranged and said, “I’ll do it all, you just hang out with your coffee and talk to me.”
It was hard work for me to stand by and do nothing, but I powered through.
But there was no powering through the post-prom frenzy. As the bedazzled teens began to stream through our front door, my husband and I yelled, “Boys to the basement! Girls upstairs! Then everyone out to the pool!”
Thankfully, I had five other adults who, in a moment of similar insanity after two years without proms, agreed to help chaperone our late night party. One was my floral friend back for round two. The other was my Voice of Reason friend who shows up in this column when need be – – and there was need in spades that night.
My husband hung flood lights so that our yard could be seen from space, and I flitted about with towels and snacks, making sure that no one accidentally fell onto a vaping device or misunderstood our lawn boundaries as an invitation to wander into the woods.
I also fretted by the pool. “Don’t hit your head on the side! Be careful about jumping off the edge. Does anyone need more pizza? I bought so much pizza . . . .”
I worried for about the first thirty minutes until the Voice of Reason calmly said, “Esther they’re just hanging out, no one is trying to sneak off. And if they do, you’ve warned them. They’re good kids having fun together, after a normal prom like normal kids do. Also don’t worry, the pizza will get eaten.”
She was right. And at 1 am I didn’t even roll my eyes at her for being right [yet again]. I’m not sure there was enough chlorine in the world to battle that much sweat and makeup in a residential pool, but thankfully the teenagers weren’t concerned about the Ph levels of the water. They just wanted to relax and be kids who finally went to prom and had the stories to prove it.
Our daughter was no exception. Her dress was a shimmering incandescent pink gown made entirely of sequins that picked up all the colors around her, as they reflected, glittered and… fell off throughout our house.
But she sparkled. They all did. And even if it was a crazy 24 hours, the smiles and laughs (and perhaps years of glitter stuck to my floors), made time stand still for a moment, even as it speeds by in a blur.