Special delivery

The package arrived just in time.

I imagined she'd squeal at the sight of the small, puffy white pillow that sat on the dining table fresh from the mailbox and waiting for her to get home and rip into it.

But I worried all hell would break loose once she finally tried it on, twirled around, and discovered it was all wrong in the way buying things from an invisible store, touch untouched, is likely to be.

Then what?

Homecoming would happen with or without the wine-colored dress I presumed to be inside the rush-rate parcel. Homecoming would happen with or without her, too.

She'd agonized for weeks over the style; popping items into to her virtual shopping cart, and dragging them out again. Refusing to commit to a purchase.

It drove me crazy. 

"They all look good to me," I offered unhelpfully. "Just pick one."

 But beside the same burgundy color, the dresses weren't similar at all. She swept through the downsides of each as if narrating designers on a catwalk until I understood the dilemma of each one.

She's not a huge fan of asymmetrical hemlines. A backless dress would require the purchase of all new foundation garments. Long sleeves would be too hot in a crowded gymnasium. And the one with the lace was undoubtedly pretty, but it looked like it might be a titch itchy.  Each one posed a risk that would require careful calculation. 

"Wouldn't it make more sense to just go to a mall?" I asked sheepishly, not really wanting to spend an entire day scouring stores, but feeling some sense of duty as a mother to offer. 

Her pensive "No, thank you," is bittersweet. 

She's reached an age when malls are places one goes with one's friends. And that age has coincided with that stage in which teens feel they have no friends; certainly none willing to try on clothes, or thumb through the record stores, or split an Orange Julius as they wait for a mom to finished shopping in Sears.

"No one drinks Orange Julius, mom. We eat cookie dough and try on makeup at Sephora."

I wish I could trade places with her.

But I'm not sure that would solve anything.

The feeling of being an adolescent alone isn't foreign to me. However, there is a vast difference between us. Instead of picking out a dress and going to the dance alone, I would have stayed home.

Of course, I didn't have Instagram and its steady stream of people I admired posting pictures of themselves in groups, clowning for the camera and showing all the fun they were having without me.

Which is what the days leading up to the big night had been. Games and spectacles in the center while she hung back on the periphery.

She didn’t want to go, but she went.

She doesn’t want to talk about it, so we don’t. She just wants to get through one last, awkward night where all she has to do is dance in a gymnasium wearing fawn colored heels and a burgundy dress, which she collects and takes off to her room.

She lets me take a picture when she returns, dressed and ready to go. She’s more than OK with being fashionably late.

On the front lawn, in the waning light, I squint through my lens and finally see the dress and realize it is almost as stunning as she is. And that makes it perfect.