She doesn’t want it posted or shared. She doesn’t want it acknowledged, much less celebrated–and she doesn’t want to put on the dress. Instead, on the day of her senior prom, Sophie stays in her room. The night before, she had agreed to a “fancy dinner” so that the day didn’t go “uncelebrated” and so that we, her family, could show “how much we love her.” At that point it was little more than a heart-warming bouquet of flowers from Mamie, her grandmother, sent to recognize her special day and offer solace. Now, somehow (ah, Mommmm??!) it is a grand affair–involving decorations, splendid meal, party attire, dancing and a concert (thank you, Lady Gaga) at 8. Such was the plan. Instead, Sophie’s tears and distress at 6 pm are the reality. She doesn’t want to disappoint. But dancing is the last thing she feels like doing.

The dining room is wonderland decorated: crisp white linens on a table sparkling with crystal and china, Christmas lights glinting, swags of tulle and silk flowers (attic, Burk Emporium) and fresh candles all around. Bill arrives home with the carry-out, bringing potted Easter lilies from church, white bows and all, so then the smell matches the aura: heavenly. The room has been closed off all day while we work, a copy of the formal invitation taped to the door:

The Burk Family, two cats, and Gus

Cordially invite you to

MINI PROM 2020

Formal Attire

R.S.V.P.

I should have called it “Prom-at-Home,” not mini prom. There’s nothing “mini” about my efforts to fill the vacuum here. Like our “learn-at-home,” Bill’s new “work from home,” our shop-from-home, Ellie’s satellite semester, indeed–all five of our of live-move-and-have-our-being at home. Everything, absolutely everything, at home. And not nearly as beautiful, if you catch my drift, of that “Together at Home” worldwide concert I watch later in the day. Just call me Mama boomerang–I did fling them out in the world, where they liked it very well, but they came back.

She had agreed to a fancy dinner. A bit of cheer, Burk style, extended to a grieving girl. Crisis energizes me, makes me want to solve problems, think outside the proverbial box, overwhelm disaster with creativity. So why does the line “I see ideas online” come out like “I see dead people”? I do. The internet is crawling with work-arounds, alternatives and why-not substitutes to all the traditional events we’ve looked forward to and lost, starting with prom right on through to graduation. Why, here are girls pulling themselves up by their $59 sandal strap and ‘doing it right’. Saw a girl in a cornflower blue ball gown who decided she would serenade neighbors and wave while traipsing around in her dress. My sister shares a pic of family with two prom-jilted girls who dressed up and danced in their driveway. Whole family rallying and the young ladies looking radiant.

I want this. We can do this. We are not a lovely tribe of fresh-minted friends–like a litter whose age, life experience, and hair lengths all match. We are a family, with decades of experience, generations of values, and by the time they are adolescents and young adults, much difference. Let’s just face facts. You can party in our history. Surely we could be of service here, prom-less one? I know the beautiful gown will be a push, but the rest? How many times have I tried to transform your world into one of your dreams and storybooks? Present unhappiness? Nothing a little Party City can’t fix. Daughter, I can make this moment touch your childhood and mine while it whispers a blessing to your future and beyond. Life moments are like that. Please, let’s have one.

Elie and Will are in on it. I thought they might be, and they are. Will is fascinated by all the china and silver he never knew we owned. Guess life took over when he was born and I stopped using it. Sophie’s grandmother’s wedding china, her great grandmother’s silver and her great-great grandmother’s crystal champagne glasses that have never graced this table appear. To fill them? What else? Her crazy parents’ 23-year old champagne produced from the garage. Isn’t everybody too cheap to part with unopened bubbly at the close up of their wedding festivities and too uninspired in over two decades to use it on something sooner? Much discussion among the decorators whether or not it’s real, whether or not mom is serious–that we’re serving minors at tonight’s fete.

Will helps with the strings of Christmas lights–six of them. Then he puts together the silver Mylar tabletop tree (Why not? It was something sparkly). Then he tries his hand at tulle and swags. He is climbing on furniture and inching around the walls like Spiderman, tsssk-ing at my pathetic electrical hook-ups and “fixing ” it all with new configurations. There’s a lot of masking tape involved. I teach him how to hang swags of tulle and silk garland, and truly you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a boy’s greasy, grubby outdoor hands “poofing” tulle. “Like this mom? This okay?” If we never get to the party tonight, I have been transported. Ellie’s on table duty, spread with white linen and cloth napkins. There are so many different sizes of plates to figure out she has to Google it: formal place setting, nine pieces. When the table is at last laid, we complete the look with fresh candles in the six crystal candlesticks and scatter the loose silk flowers as a centerpiece, topped with a glass basket of jelly beans. Easter bunny–er, Martha Stewart–eat your heart out.

Usually it’s just time standing in the way of polishing a festivity to its finest. Today? Bah!! We’re in a global pandemic. I laugh at the pools of time we have. I’m hanging a grand (bedsheet) curtain over the doorway, and Will is onto his next task on our checklist–make a playlist of songs to put on our large smart TV in the living room. What’s a party without music? “Geeze, that was easy,” says boy, back in a jiffy. He Googled “prom playlist” and within seconds has playing all the popular tunes. Our home is hip with the push of a button. I am delighted. Really? If only our moods and emotions these days were as readily scripted as a playlist. And as easy to play. I would love to pluck my response to this whole situation off the internet and just follow that, rather than strapping into the roller coaster ride of my life every morning.

The not-gown is made of satin, long and flowing like the girl who would be in it. It’s as simple and understated as can be, sweet as a summer breeze. Floor length with delicate straps, gently draped bodice in the lightest, loveliest shade of champagne that warms her skin. In a word, it is perfect. I’ve only seen it on her once. For a while after its mail-order arrival into our home, it sat inside the package on her desk chair. Letting the Covid-19 die out, maybe? We have been alternately spraying, wiping or ignoring our mail for a couple days as part of germ control. But I wonder if her negligence is born of something else. Hesitation she would ever get to wear it, maybe? A resistance to commit to the hope she would? It’s a risky thing these days, committing to the hope. For me, I’ve always had a hang-up committing to the merch (especially something this expensive), so it crosses my mind we should return the dress, send it right back before the return window closes. Yet in this silent, one-mom conversation I’m having while standing in her bedroom saying goodnight, in another breath the voice is silenced. No return. Daughter, I would pay any amount to see you in that gown at your senior prom. And I would empty my bank account to keep it hanging in your closet, a little pilot light of hope.

This week I’ve been revisiting past proms and homecoming dances, where Bill and I were the ones in street clothes, sheepishly pausing our weekend garage projects to show up at a photo shoot for a group of girls who had been making beauty their weekend project. Last year this time we were on the steps of the state capital, gorgeous spring evening, historic venue, teeming with teens and their parent paparazzi. Already they had down that airy, musical congregating of the celebrity, laughing, smiling–looking at one another always with a glance or nod to the cameras. Wind in their long hair and their make-up perfect, so perfect. All the colors of spring and the dreams of youth suspended on the warm evening pulsing with happiness, pleasure, fun. So real you could see it pooled on their skin. Their ability to turn a high school dance into the night of their lives was no different than my dining room transformation, really. Polished, pink and glitzy–and eminently post-able.

I can admit to wishing for a more substantive life in those moments. As they tottered about in spiky heels aerating prim lawns, I couldn’t help it. It all seemed so image conscious. Superficial. Super selfie. A couple hundred photos…magazine spread or memorable evening?…hard to tell which. I can admit to reflecting sadly on their all-post, all out-there, all-publicized lives that seemed so vapid behind their smiles and fish pouts. I wished for them to know “real” life, larger worlds. Gosh, I prayed that for Sophie. So much so, that on a recent walk reflecting on our situation and its far-reaching ramifications it sprung to mind: Did I bring this down on our heads, wishing for authenticity for our young people? Did I? Oh dear Lord, I said “depth,” not disaster. I said “meaning,” not misery, I said “purpose.” How in the world did you get “pandemic” from that? I take it back! Oh how I take it back.

Ironically, tonight it is me running for the selfie stick. I issued printed invitations to this affair, spent the day looting the attic for décor, thinking through our formal wear choices. I want a record of our fun. I want to immortalize our clever approach. Such magicians and dream weavers those Burks–staring down devastation, looking loss in the eye and turning a few dusty silk flowers into a night gala. Bibbity Boppity. Boo. It’s not a replacement prom or a wishful place-marker, it’s an event all its own, bent on healing and hope. My very own “at home together” concert. Instead, it has plunged our girl into despair. Content to stay the day in her room working on calculus and ignoring the hours as they ticked away, willing the day to end, she is now confronted with smiling party guests, expectation to perform and appreciate, and the terrible line that sticks: formal attire. “Mom,” she says in a tiny, terror stricken voice, “If I put on the dress tonight, I’m afraid I’ll never get to wear it again.”

Okay then. Casual it is! I meant “normal” attire, people, not formal. After drying tears and comforting Sophie, we coax her off the bed and invite her to a “fancy dinner” as if we have just thought of it. Ellie and Will, mid-dressing in their rooms, have received the memo that somehow osmosed through closed doors and are hastily pulling on jeans and tee shirts and yanking their comforters over their fancy duds laid out (Will’s dress socks and black oxfords which he polished and shined for the occasion are still at the foot of his bed when I go up with him hours later). We escort her downstairs to the first ever street-clothes gala and draw the curtain to reveal our magic kingdom of denial: Le Dining Room. Such a venue! Will has lit all the candles and now that it’s dark outside the room fairly glows. No, it is on fire, alive with hope and promise. This promise: It will be okay. I see a little light go on in her eyes, and then a smile. Just a little smile, bigger on the inside than the part you can see. A silent goodbye to the gown, and just as quickly, so quickly I almost miss it, she slips into something more comfortable: acceptance. Depth. Meaning. Purpose. Ah, my Sophie girl. It will be okay. It really will.

After our delicious Chinese carry-out we take a walk (prom-enade) in the even more beautiful spring evening, and after that we open our fortune cookies and the champagne. My kids, they’ve seen too many movies where the cork rockets out of the bottle, followed by cascading liquid and bubbles spraying everywhere. Ours? Aged in the garage by dreams and now a fine “vintage”? It comes out with a hopeful little “poof”–still bubbly, though less sparkling, a darker ale color. Tastes…well, ah, three of the five of us have no reference point so what’s the difference? Maybe if they think it’s ghastly (it kind of is) they won’t go for it any time soon. That’s okay. Nothing else tonight is here is as expected, either. I have a Christmas tree in my dining room, icicle lights taped to the wall molding, and my 13-year-old is knocking back old champagne out of 100-year old etched crystal like we are doing shots. I tell you what. You can’t make this stuff up.

There was nothing “mini” about the Burk Family Prom 2020, and I am happy to report that the effects far outweigh the effort. Her fortune?

“There is a gradual improvement. Healings are sweet and tender.”