Proms, Dione Warwick, and a White '59 Corvette

        

              

                                   

High School teachers attend proms. Before retirement, I had been to more than a few, and at each one - as chaperones - we gaped at the kids doing their things and told our own prom stories. 

These are mine.

St. Mary’s had a Junior Prom held in the boys’ gym when the schools were separated by gender. In my Sophomore year, a Junior invited me. My mother said I was too young to go to a prom and I’m sure I threw a huge fit, but I didn’t go.

In my Junior year, I was dating a Manhasset boy who was a Freshman in college. Since my mother knew his mother, the age difference seemed to pass by without a squabble. The college boy accepted my invitation to Junior Prom in the gym: “An Evening in Paris,” decorated by student council members.

I wore a dotted-swiss dress which came down to the floor and clear up to my neck where it was delicately embroidered with pink rosebuds. It was a hand-me-down from my sister, Mary - a normal, clothing transaction I was fine with my whole life, right up to the day I wore the same wedding gown she had worn. 

As for Junior Prom, the college boy had his own car, so - unlike most of my friends going with boys who weren’t old enough to drive at night - I didn’t have to travel in the backseat while someone’s father chauffeured us to the high school.

There was one problem, however.  My college boy was the ex-boyfriend of one of my BFF’s. She had not taken the breakup well, and when I entered the picture - even though time had passed - she couldn’t forgive me.

I totally got that. Really. I would have hated me, too. 

Consequently, since our other friends understood the issue more clearly than I did in my nubile romantic state, they supported our mutual, heartbroken girlfriend.

That left college boy and me with nowhere to sit at prom.

So we walked around to other tables, saying hello. We danced a bit to “Bobby and the Orbits.” We had our photo taken under a starry blue, eiffel-towered arch and danced some more. That’s all I remember of the night. I know at some point our romance involved the exchange of a heavy silver, I.D. bracelet, some necking at the Westbury Drive-In, and a few nights spent in Gino’s or at the Hilltop (illegally for me).

However, by the spring of my Senior year, all that had changed. College boy was gone, my BFFs were back, and I didn’t have a date for my Senior Prom at the Garden City Hotel. 

Suffice it to say, in 1965 girls didn’t go to proms in groups or pairs.

A few weeks before the big night, I was discussing this dilemma in a kitchen in Sea Cliff where a St. Mary’s friend lived with her parents and two brothers.

Her mother - one of the kindest and most beautiful moms I’ve ever known - said:  

“Well you’ve got to go to your Senior Prom!  It’s something you never forget. Why don’t you go with (not his name) Jay? Yes, that’s perfect!”

And before I knew it, she was calling: 

“Ja-ay?  Ja ayyy?” up the stairs and my friend was jumping up and down, saying: 

“Perfect.  Jay’s the perfect answer. You can go with JAY!”

I was stunned. Jay was a year older than we were and about as close to perfect as one could get.  

His brown hair stood up in a high crew; he had a “great physique” (in the term of the times) and his eyes - well, let’s just say, my friends would be more than honored to sit with me this year.

Jay’s mom came bounding down the back steps - in jeans with her pony- tail bobbing and her smile pulsing all the way through her eyes over to mine.

“Jay just got out of the shower.  He’ll be down in a minute.” 

Before I had a chance to breathe in some Zen at a two-story window looking out over the cliffs onto LI Sound, Jay came down the stairs -  in a tennis shirt that hung out over cut-off jeans. He was rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

“So...Susu..how about I take you to prom?”

I started to laugh and say stupid things about his mother making him ask me - and Jay said:

“It wasn’t my mom that made me ask you, it was her promise that I could take you in her car.”

Well, that may have offended some girls, but Jay’s mom’s car was a 1959, white Corvette convertible - a two-seater with red leather seats.

I went over it in my head:  My date would be Jay - one of the smoothest St. Mary’s guys in the Class of 1964 who would be driving one of the coolest cars ever. It started to make sense to me, so I said: “Let’s go!” 

I wore a butter-yellow dress with an empire waist and soft ruffles at the neck that I’d just worn as a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. I also carried a light scarf, as advised by Jay’s mom, so we could ride with the top down. 

Jay wore a white dinner jacket and pinned a Gardenia corsage below my shoulder. 

When we pulled up to the front of the Garden City Hotel, three parking valets ran toward the Corvette to attend to it.

I don’t remember much of the prom itself. I mostly remember driving in that car which took us along the LIE toward Queens at midnight. We were headed to “The Boulevard,” a nightclub.  Dione Warwick was scheduled to perform at 1 a.m. after doing a few other shows first and finding the need to have more than a drink or two while she performed. The last show of her night was for an audience composed of underaged school kids with fake id’s.

I will be kind and say she was over-tired and perhaps alcohol wasn’t the best choice; she was definitely at the stage where one’s words aren’t coming together well.  So, for some reason, she stopped singing and began to tell LONG stories about herself in high school - none of which I recall - but I do remember this: She kept saying she’d cook breakfast for us if we showed up at her house in NJ. She had an assistant write out directions. She was quite insistent about making kids in the audience promise they’d show up.

I never heard about anyone going. I know the kids I was with didn’t even think about it.

We had plans back in Sea Cliff - on the beach below Jay’s parents’ house, where they and some of the other Senior parents were serving breakfast.  

We ate a fine spread and watched the sun come up over the familiar shorelines of our LI Sound. Someone played the guitar, some of us fell asleep, a few had serious conversations with the adults about what our futures held. Others went for walks down along the water.

Jay and I watched it all, and, while the sun rose just a few coves away over our hometown, friends became friends forever - and I never forgot that Jay’s mom was right about some memories living with us as long as we live.

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                                                                                        BOBBY & the ORBITS

  Word Tsunami

The writer in me has been silent of late. It happens from time to time and, though it frustrates me, I’ve learned to live with the periods of time when the words aren’t there. I write trepidatiously even now, wondering if the words are really here.

Sometimes it’s a barrage of worldly words that takes mine away. I had been writing a reminiscence of my college years in Boston, when terror in that city struck the Pollyanna memory dumb on April 15th. 

I suppose I had begun to lose my writing words in the wake of Newtown, Connecticut; as if that senselessness weren’t enough to strike us all mute.  I didn’t listen to the media reports then. I know the grief of just one child’s relative personally, that rattles around in my head and weakens my heart, still.

To get away from the coverage I watched TCM here and there, or had NPR on at a low murmur in the background - and when the thoughts of those families came, I stopped and mourned for them and for us, their human family.  There are no words for those moments of collective consciousness when the vast majority of us share the same emotions, so I just let the feelings wrap around me, untainted by the voices of CNN.

That’s where my words have gone these many months - to disaster after disaster - including multiple acts of violence at home and abroad, a devastating hurricane, and more than a few terrifying tornadoes. My inability to reason it all out with my ‘pen’ is even further fraught by those close to me who are shouldering the everyday burdens life brings us. I speak to them, knowing my words are not enough to soothe illness, rejection, or loss - hoping the emotions in my voice speak the care.

This is not to say I’m finding myself completely without the right words. No, on the contrary, my husband, our six-month old grandchild, and I carry on valuable conversations on a daily basis.They are some of the most reassuring dialogues to have come my way since the past year closed.

They have progressed from the basic, sweet cooings of a newborn to the eyeglass-grabbing squeals and songs of a full-bodied soprano. The baby sets the words and we repeat them, merrily.

We are all BFF’s, at this point, and have agreed upon a language based on musical sounds - some of which mean:  “I want something now...this very instant” - others, like the sustained ‘ahhhhh’ that ushers from her lips when a breeze hits her face on an outdoor stroll, that say:  “Does it get any better than this?”

I love how primitive and rich this dialogue is and believe it has awakened the written word in me. I’ve identified a place we share where new found words are driven by sounds and emotions.

Maybe we should all start communicating like this more often - ditch the  friending, texting, blogging, liking, and linking.  The words are getting in our way.

And here I am, adding to the tsunami, I know. I’m part of the problem that dilutes the truths we need to find right now - the ones that give us hope - Emily Dickinson’s “Thing with feathers.”

So I’ve spent some time in “Show, don’t tell,” and I rather like it there. Oh, there are words involved, but I try not to spend them unnecessarily. And I know I have to write; I’ve always had to write. 

But I’m determined not to waste too many precious words. The good ones anyway.