The dress is light pink satin, floor length, with a slight train. It’s pleated and fits exquisitely. From the second she tried it on, it was close to perfect. Only minor alterations were needed.
Now, it hangs covered in the largest garment bag I’ve ever seen, balanced on one end of the curtain rod in her room, waiting patiently for the call, waiting for the moment to get back into the lineup, become relevant, waiting for life to return to normal.
It’s her prom dress. My daughter’s senior prom dress.
L.G. and friends, hundreds from the Columbia High School Class of 2020, should be dressing up one last time and formalizing their high school rite of passage at prom Saturday night. It’s a big moment stolen from this group thanks to the covid-19 pandemic sweeping the land and canceling school and life events everywhere. Prom was scratched early on at CHS once school was closed for the month of April. The same anguish is playing out across Florida Saturday night and for the next several weekends across America.
She has been to the prom twice already, lucky enough to be invited as a sophomore and busy helping plan last year’s as a junior, but senior prom is different. This one was very different.
The search for the perfect dress lasted a couple months, at least. Online visuals occupied most of the research and I was neither consulted nor did I offer any opinions. L.G. announced early on that she would be buying her prom dress herself with her own money. She would be picking it out, getting the one she wanted and she would advise once the selection had been made. She went to the store with friends, tried on several, narrowed it down, then her mother and I were invited to the unveiling on a Saturday morning. The first couple were nice, but even the look on her face said she was settling in those numbers.
She saved the pink one for last because she thought it was her favorite and she chose wisely. I’ve never seen her look more beautiful. Stunning, standing six-feet-tall in heels, in this dress that was made for her. My little girl all grown up and absolutely a vision. She has three part-time jobs so she saved the cash to pay the bill and prom dresses cost about as much as a month’s rent in some apartments I’ve lived in. She drove me on the way home and I enjoyed seeing the smile of accomplishment on her face, seeing the satisfaction she had of setting a goal, making a plan, working and saving the money needed to pay cash for that all-important senior prom dress. She talked about realizing how expensive it was, but also how rewarding because she did it herself, still maintained a savings plan and still had money left over. It was an adult conversation.
Now, she’s been robbed of the payoff. No night out with friends. No limo ride. No dinner. No photos. No dancing the night away with the Class of 2020. Sure, these are not life and death losses. They are not economic losses that will be felt everywhere by all of these people who provide the fancy sit-down restaurant meals, the limo rides, the photos and the DJ driven music. Those people are losing real money and their livelihoods. That’s a different tragedy and I do not make light of their situation.
This is an emotional loss that I see affecting my daughter, so my heart breaks for her and the other seniors out there who were really excited about going to prom. We can’t fix it. These seniors are only seniors once. They get one chance to experience being 17 or 18. They get one senior prom. And it’s sad they are being robbed of the memories.
Todd Wilson is publisher of the Lake City Reporter