First Dance

Friday The Child went to her first dance, The Snowball. She was sooooo excited. The Snowball is a very prescribed affair. Children are escorted by a parent. Dress is semi-formal. The girls are pinned with half a playing card (The Child was the Queen of Clubs...an omen?) and the boys draw a card for each dance and find the corresponding girl. The 7th grade teacher, who calls them "ladies and gentleman" all night, teaches them the foxtrot, waltz and swing and with one 'get funky' exception, they dance quite properly all evening.

The Child had bought a lovely dress for the occasion and was wearing her first heels and stockings. I'd taken her to Rudy's in the afternoon for a hair cut and they straightened her hair. She looked amazing. She also applied some makeup, without asking, but did so in a very lighthanded way so I let it stand. I snapped some photos of her and her date and then they went off while I stayed home, had an omlette and a glass of wine and watched "What Not to Wear".

When they got home, The Child pulled off her heels, declared, in the time honored fashion, "My feet are killing me" and couldn't stop smiling as she told me all about it.

My little girl is growing up. The firsts of babyhood - first tooth, first word, first step, first artichoke - are all so noteworthy and thrilling for parents. The firsts of Tweendom tend to be more fraught. She also came home from the dance with her first date.

Ok, we aren't calling it that. This was an invitation from a friend, A, to accompany him and his uncle to the Seattle Art Museum on Sunday. All on the up and up. She wasn't all a twitter about it...it's not like the boy is Daniel Radcliffe for crying out loud. I was fine with the idea but The Spouse, not so much. He has another plan: there's another boy, M, who he thinks is the perfect "childhood sweetheart" candidate, primarily because The Spouse thinks the kid is gay. His plan is that if they get together then she will always have a date but he won't have to worry about any of the stuff daddies worry about because the kid plays for the other team. He reckons that if they date through high school then M can come out of the closet and by then he (The Spouse) will be able to better handle the implications of his little girl being an adult. (I doubt it...this is the man who looked at his just-birthed baby girl and declared, "She doesn't date until she's 30!")

I talked him down off the ledge. I told him that it wasn't a date and as long as we didn't make a big deal about it, neither would she. I can't think of anything healthier than her having good guy friends in middle school and high school (I did) and that there is plenty of room in her calendar for both A & M. She went, it was great and that was that. Although A is now calling the house. But I asked point-blank how she felt about him and she said he was a 'friend'. (Oh, here we go!) Then she told me that she had a crush on M and furthermore that he told her he'd had a crush on her since she started at St. G's. Which I guess means that The Spouse's plan has a fair shot after all.

This is a "training wheels" time of life. The Child needs to learn to negotiate the convoluted paths of the heart and it looks like she's already starting. Of course, she still won't be allowed to actually date as in by-herself-with-a-boy-in-a-car until she's at least 16. I was 15 and I can tell you I was too young. We will be ramping up the conversations and dropped hints about virtue and self-respect (laid on a foundation we've been building since she could talk) and we will undoubtedly spend many a Friday evening sitting up and waiting to hear that car door slam. It just ocurred to me that I'm not ready for this, either.