APRIL 2017 -
It’s prom season at the Kudzu house and preparations have moved into full swing.
After an exhaustive(ing?) search for the perfect dress, we have landed a keeper, discarding 7 or 8 finalists in the process. Matching shoes already live with us, and the shopping for jewelry has commenced. This month I have watched Mrs. Kudzu carefully measure, mark, pin, press and hem this magical gown, and it hit me that I should have hit the pause button.
I have seen my wife sew for our kids for nearly 20 years. Halloween at our house started in August as she planned costumes for first Ethan, then both Kudzu kids. That first
handcrafted costume was Woody from Toy Story. The next year, Autumn was a wispy fairy and Ethan’s costume was an elaborate Mr. Potato Head, complete with interchangeable Velcro appendages stored in a large back pocket. Over the years there was a princess, a blue dog, Harry Potter and the Flash. Her sewing machine also has produced a pink poodle, a black cat, Batman and Anakin Skywalker along with a series of high school alterations for slacks for homecoming and dresses for a series of formals and semi-formals. But those costumes – even the formals are costumes of a sort -- are behind us now. In their place is this beautiful, shimmery gown of golden tan covered in blue and pink flowers embroidered in light-catching thread. It’s a stunner, and the girl, make that young woman, who will be wearing it in a couple of weeks is doubly so. It is entirely possible that this hem was the last special project from my wife’s sewing machine, and that kind of hurts. Gone are trick-or-treat costumes based on Disney princesses. Now we have a real life princess in a real life ball gown, who is going to a real life ball. This is not just any ball, mind you. This is the big one: Senior Prom. And, if all this wistful wonder was not enough, my girl found out just this week that she had been nominated for Prom Queen. This really is shaping up to be its own version of a Cinderella experience, right down to the animal sidekicks and her own Prince Charming. My girl might even argue that her car is not far removed from a pumpkin. As I watched Mrs. Kudzu sew, I realized that every stitch in the hem of this dress was closing out an era. There may be a few more formals that my wife's sewing machine will be used for, but probably not like this. This sewing project is launching us into a whirl of activity that will transition Autumn from high school student to college coed. We’ll make a trip to Nashville to see her brother perform at a music festival and fill up prom weekend with hair, makeup, pictures and laughter.
A couple of weeks later she'll get her senior yearbook, two-or-three hundred pages of memories of the year Rome High won the state high school football championship, the year her classmates voted her Most Artistic and the year she landed her dream job at an animal boarding and rescue facility.
And, just a few weeks after that, she’ll put on one more costume, a red cap and gown with a tassel that will move from right to left. When she tried on her newly hemmed dress, Autumn couldn’t help but spin around several times, to watch the skirt flare out like Cinderella’s gown, just like she did when she put on her first ballet costume years ago. I don’t want to turn back the clock, that would be too painful, but if time could just slow down, I would appreciate it.
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