Dirty Dancing

Spartan Girl Dancing - 450 BC

Last night I went to a benefit for a division of a local children's hospital. The benefit was at a beach club, right on the ocean, and it was a casual affair. There was beer and wine to drink, and you stood in line for delicious sausages and french fries cooked on an open grill. The air was clean and southern California cold, and we sat under heat lamps at white picnic tables. A couple of my friends were there and many friends of friends, as well. At some point, I learned that the prestigious private girls' school in my neighborhood was having a dance, and my friends' children, both boys and girls were all going to be there. I found myself caught up in the conversation, listening and laughing to the stories about how wild it was to have children already going to dances. How do they dance, I wondered aloud. Do they slow dance like we used to? I'm pretty sure they dirty dance, one of my friends said. They stand in small circles, shoulder to shoulder and bump and grind around the center. Evidently, there are chaperones at the dance, but their job is to monitor the comings and goings, make sure that no one leaves, that no one is off in some corner making out or worse. And no girl wants her mother to be a chaperone. There doesn't seem to be much interference with the actual dancing, because that's just the way it is.

I found myself nodding and chatting and listening and laughing, almost as if I were somehow a part of the scene. At around 10:15, these women all whipped their cell phones out to check on their girls and make sure that babysitters and dads had picked them up or that they couldn't go out afterward. I made an idle comment about how different it was than when I was a girl when there were no cell phones, and we just had to be home at a certain time, how we were set free in a different way. I could have said that this was certainly a good thing for which to prepare myself; after all, Henry will be in middle school in a couple of years and just last week he went to his first Cotillion. But actually, I was having almost an out of body experience, doing all that nodding and laughing I'm just like you, I know what you're talking about. 

Because actually, I'm not. Just like them. I, too, have a daughter who is fourteen and technically in the eighth grade. She has long curly hair and beautiful eyes and skin. She has breasts and long, albeit too-thin legs and wears skinny jeans and tee-shirts that her younger brother says are "cool."  But she'll probably never be invited to nor go to a dance. She'll never be embarrassed to have me as a chaperone at a dance. And I'll never see her dance with someone or share with her those rites of passage. And when I look into her eyes I wonder whether she knows that, whether she yearns for anything in particular, whether she is bored or waiting  for her life to begin.

I don't feel like this often, but when I do it's as if a sledgehammer has caught me by surprise. Wow, I think. I thought I was done with this.