Stupid without You

To my surprise, the theme they chose was the hundred-year-old children's book, The Secret Garden. With this as their inspiration, the junior class officers, led by my daughter Colette, hosted a prom for the upperclassmen this month that was breathtaking in its gorgeousness. Their year-long efforts of fundraising and planning culminated in a transformation of the school's beautiful, old auditorium into an English garden at night.

A month before the event, the juniors presented antique keys on ribbons and dusk-colored calla lilies to the seniors with their invitations. On prom night, when the guests arrived in the foyer, couples passed through a wrought iron arch wrapped in tiny lights and ivy, past a tinkling fountain, classic concrete garden benches and an abundance of flowers.

The view of the interior garden was deliberately and cleverly concealed by a tall, constructed garden hedge covered in verdant moss and flanked with urns of flowers. Around that hedge, in the secret garden, meticulously crafted balustrades, low moss-covered hedges and greenery surrounded pretty tables, and low twinkling lights hung over the dance floor. Along with projected shadows of vines, real ivy crept up the walls.

With money they raised themselves, Colette and her committee created all of this beauty, and then gave it to their friends, in celebration of high school.


The prom was a big accomplishment for my daughter. It was something I played only a miniscule part in, but in the end I was thoroughly caught up in her excitement. What a thrilling time, in the balmy spring weather, constructing a real secret garden! Her date, her dress, her dinner and limousine plans: Colette's happiness became my happiness.

Because of her heavy responsibilities for the event itself, she let down her usual guard with me and allowed me to help with her personal affairs, even permitting a mini facial. Blissfully, the week before prom, I laid a warm washcloth over her young, radiant skin and then with my fingertips rubbed in special potions and creams.

I began to want the experience to be perfect for her. In the final days of preparation, when I was enlisted to dash around town picking up boxes of fresh moss from the florist, the heady magic of prom carried me away. I became, in a word, over-involved.


The morning after her prom, as Steve and I lay in our bed, he said to me, "You love this stuff. I wish you could have been my prom date."

I couldn't take in the sweetness of his words over the sadness of what I was feeling. Colette's presence expands my life. Her experience enriches mine. For the first time, I sobbed about her growing up. "I'm going to miss her so much!"

Steve stroked my hair. "It's okay. We'll find new things to do."

"I don't want to find new things!" I cried. Everything seemed trivial in comparison to my connection to my firstborn. What came to mind as Steve tried to console me was a saying I'd seen on some whimsical German stationery: "Ohne Dich ist alles doof," translated, Without you, everything is stupid. With Colette gone, I thought, everything would be stupid. Flowers, ladybugs, butterflies--all stupid.


Colette conked out after the prom, sleeping through until the following evening. The house was dark and still. I tried to move on with my day, my life. But for a full week after prom, I was uncharacteristically and hopelessly weepy.

Forget the image of a mother bird forcibly shoving her baby birds out of the nest. No, I'd been soaring in a hot air balloon with Colette, and suddenly I'd flipped over the side of the basket and landed smack, splat, on the pavement below. It was not my glorious adventure. It was hers.


How I would love to stay up there with her, but it isn't my place. My responsibility is to stay down here on my street--grocery shopping, raising my sprightly secondborn, tutoring students, feeding the dogs, taking care of and engaging in the full life we've created. With a mixture of sadness, excitement and love, I watch Colette, floating aloft in her beautiful balloon, so full of promise, and I'm eager to see in which direction she's headed.

On the radio, I hear my favorite new song, "Nothin' on You," and I think only of Colette. The song seems to be about her, how I feel about her and what I want to express to her: "Beautiful girls, all over the world...They got nothin' on you, baby, nothin' on you, baby...." The combination of B.o.B.'s hip-hop lyrics with the loveliness of Bruno Mars's singing moves me, conveying everything I want Colette to know--that there is no one on earth more beautiful and amazing than she; that I have felt this way since the day she was born; that I will always feel this way; and that I want her to carry this with her wherever she goes. This is how I want you to be treated, I will tell her; don't ever settle for less. I weep in the car over the song's power to connect me with my huge love for her. Does she know how loved and lovable she is, and will I be able to find ways to joyfully participate in her life as she moves toward independence?


While driving out to an adult friend's birthday gathering, Steve gently advises me, "So, you got pretty caught up in Colette's prom. You need to step back a little now and give her some space."

I think about how it all transpired and how I really tried to keep my emotional boundaries in tact during the week leading up to the prom. "I think I did pretty well," I respond with uncertainty. "Was there a specific point when you thought I didn't have good boundaries?"

He looks over at me with raised eyebrows. "How about when I had to pull you out of the trunk of the limo?"

"Ooh. Yeah. That."

We both laugh, and it strikes me that this was a big experience for all of us, a powerful passage into her senior year--one I'm so glad we shared.