This is my younger sister, Natalie.
This year she is a junior in high school. And a couple weeks ago she went to her first prom with her brand-new boyfriend.
Do you know what prom means? For the male readers who don't, it means shopping. In packs. Gaggles of girls flitting through frothy racks in department stores, fingering the sharp edges and bright sparkles of jewelry specially selected to match the perfect dress. And oh, the opinions. That's what the pack is there for - the opinions. Too big, too shiny, doesn't fit, I'll get a bigger size, puke green is definitely not a flattering color, you're right you're usually a size 4 but I'll go get the size 16 just in case.
My mother and I had the privilege of being that gaggle and going shopping with my sister. My soccer-playing softball-shortstop sister. Picture that surly face churning upfield and wearing muddied shin guards; now put her in the "prom" department at Nordstrom's. Let's just say, she's not the type to gravitate toward the hooks dribbled with pink and lace.
But there we three were, surrounded by rhinestones and plunging necklines. And, as expected, she got her opinions. Try this one, that one's dangerously close to pink, try on this teal dress just to humor me, I don't think a neckline cut to your belly button would pass The Modesty Test.
(The "Modesty Test" is a part of the pre-prom process at our small Christian high school: female students have to bring in and model their dresses so the dresses can be critiqued and approved by the female staff members. They gather in a sweaty tiled classroom and wave their hands over the girls' selections: hem here, pin there, shorten here. Half of my sister's friends this year were required to sew an extra piece of fabric to their dresses to better conceal their breasts.)
It was when we moved to the dressing room that I suddenly began to struggle with a long-time-coming epiphany.
I haven't lived at home with my family since the end of 2006 - three and a half years. When I moved out I was nineteen and starting my second year in college; Natalie was fourteen and starting 8th grade. And now, here in the dressing room, I had to turn my head as she took off her bra. Again, bra. BRA. My little sister wears a bra, implying that she has boobs with which to fill them.
Didn't see THAT one coming.
As she wriggled out of an unflattering blue dress, I screwed my jaw back on and observed her more carefully. In a picture taken at my high school graduation in 2005, her curly hair had been french-braided, and the usual halo of frizzy strays had circled her face and pressed against my white robe. The girl, the lady, (what is she?) in front of me, the one pulling skirts out from dress racks and joking about the more slutty dresses, has learned to manage her hair. She bought a straightener long ago and has clamped the childhood halo into a sleek frame for her face. I look at her eyes, identical to mine and inherited from mom, and see the make-up around them, the eye liner and mascara she's tastefully applied. Her eyebrows are carefully plucked and groomed.
And I suddenly realized - BANG - that there she is, mere months from being a legal adult and just a little over a year from her high school diploma. Oh. My. God. I'm about to have an adult sister. They better have benches in the next dressing room, because I need to sit down.
We wandered back out into the froth, and another handful of dresses were selected in the second foray - blue and teal and purple (the dangerously close to pink one). I looked away when instructed for discretion, and jiggled the zippers when it was required of me. And then, all cramped together in the dressing room stall with a bad case of the giggles, she raised up her arms and slipped into her Dress. There she was, elegant and happy, my mother's small hands twisting up her long brown hair onto her head as Natalie tugged at the neckline. It was purple; the folds were filled with shimmering sparkles; the cling of the dress suited her feminine curves (feminine curves?!). She looked in the mirror; she looked beautiful.
I stood there and blinked, struggling to remove the superimposed image of My Little Sister, the one who sat in a high chair for an hour because she wouldn't say please for a graham cracker, the one who swallowed a dime-sized rock one afternoon while sitting in her car seat, the one who always scowled so stubbornly beneath that halo of frizz. Because, like an overlaid transparency, that's all I could see. And here, between 3 grey pressboard walls and a cheap wall mirror, I fought to tug it away. Because there before me was a young lady chattering about matching colors with her date, and examining in the mirror how the dress made her look, and responding with that awkward lips-only smile to each compliment my mother and I gave.
My Little Sister is
A Young Lady.
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