American Prom Season: Fancy Gowns and Midlife Musings

I was driving the last mile between work and home when I spotted that man outside our town’s high school. He stood, hand held high, in the center of the pedestrian crossing. No uniform. No fluorescent safety vest. No signs of a roadside accident, so what had happened here? 

Ah. Of course. Tonight must be the high school prom. And this is someone’s Dad volunteering as a safety-minded traffic cop.

On this blue-sky evening in late May, I had been living in America for two-plus decades. Nine months earlier, just before our New England winter and well before our worldwide COVID pandemic, I had turned 50. Nowadays, they say that 50 is the new 40, and, therefore, way too early for middle-aged laments or regrets.

By then, I had mastered most of the American lingo—or enough so that the baristas in our local coffee shop no longer asked me to repeat my order. I had learned to talk louder, faster, to drop most of those rural Irish or dual-language expressions that left people looking baffled and, sometimes, a little miffed. 

Now, out my car windshield, there was a parade of young men in tuxedos and high-school girls in gowns. Over there, stood a huddle of smiley parents with their phone cameras ready. So here was yet another new American thing that, as a childless woman, I had never expected to see—let alone have a front-row seat.

My secondary (high) school days happened in a small town that often smelled of the weekly Wednesday cattle mart. By my 1970s convent school days, Ireland had joined the European Union, all post-primary education was now free, and our small-town square had gotten itself a corner supermarket and a fast-food, take-out restaurant. 

Around the corner and up a road from that cattle mart stood our convent school where, for five years, I sat in classrooms with rows of matching brown desks.

At the end of our final year, we had to take our Leaving Certificate exams, the approximate equivalent of the French Baccalaureate. 

Did our graduation celebration predate or follow that exam marathon? I can’t remember. But I do remember how our Sisters of Mercy invited us and our parents to a special graduation mass. After that mass, we would share platters of tiny triangle sandwiches and vanilla cupcakes—freshly baked by the nuns. Best of all: Though the no-jewelry and no-makeup rules still applied, for our big, special night, we could swap our navy blue uniforms for civilian clothes. Some of us were turned out in our best, 1970s-styled v-neck sweaters over an A-line skirt. Did a few of the bolder girls turn out in bell bottoms? Maybe. I sat there in a hand-me-down, cranberry-colored dress in a floral print and high-neck design that registered somewhere between Laura Ashley and Laura Ingalls.

That night, we girls ate our fill, then sat in the front row where we waited to be called, one by one, to the stage. As our parents looked on (no cameras), the school principal gave each of us our graduation gift of a tiny black Bible.

Nowadays, my memory snapshots of that school have almost no soundtrack. In my limited audio footage, there are no flouncy words like, “Reach for the stars!” or, “You do you!” Or, “Smile for the camera, Sweetheart!” 

Instead, about four months before our graduation ceremony, here’s Sister D., our career-guidance nun. She and I are sitting in a tiny, upstairs room where she has just presented my two (appropriately female) college and career choices. Sitting there, I remind Sister that English literature and French are my passions and best-in-class subjects. When I say that one of our larger universities now offers a new, multilingual degree in international studies, she shakes her head and smirks and says, “No. Not for a girl like you.” 

In all our lives, there are some words that, no matter how hard or often we hit the “delete” buttons, the anthem persists and plays on inside our heads. Oh, yes! Even when we have begun to build a life in a new place or country; even when that life becomes more contemplative, more existentially true–at least for introvert me–than all the days and prayers in those convent classrooms. 

Now, a new line of prom couples started across that crosswalk. These laughing faces. The flurry of high heels and corsages and long dresses and coiffed hairstyles. Honestly, this was way better than watching TV!

I spotted that girl, a Julia Roberts lookalike, in a scarlet, backless dress. She held hands with a tuxedoed boy who looked like a modern-day Clark Gable. 

Halfway across the pedestrian crossing, that red-dress girl dropped her partner’s hand to stride on ahead. Step. Step. No wobbling in those heels. No glancing left or right for parental approval. Just that confident stride, that face tilted into the evening sun.

Sitting there in my car, I longed to roll down the window to ask that girl: “Please tell me who told or permitted you to take the lead role in this promenade event and, by the looks of it, maybe all the way into your adult life?” 

The group of students had all crossed now. The Dad-turned-traffic cop waved me on. The car behind me beeped. I ignored them both to linger for one last, fascinated look at that red-dress girl. 

I was taught that envy is one of the seven deadly sins. But on that school prom evening and in this middle phase of life, it’s sometimes hard not to envy or covet things that seem daring and foreign, including a scarlet, backless dress that defies and controverts all the old rules I learned around feminine modesty. 

In this phase of life, it’s hard not to want just one night, one chance to be someone bolder, brighter, louder—a woman who tilts her face into the sun to catwalk down the path of youth.