A High Kick on Homecoming Night

This past Saturday found myself and eleven of my friends clothed in starch and shimmer, seated around a long table at Marcello’s Father and Son Restaurant in Northbrook. In the dimness of the room, away from the steady rain of camera flashes and the eager faces of our parents looming behind them, we all  stopped posing and could breathe again.

It was a godsend to finally be among friends. I relished the normality of it all, as if there were jeans and tee-shirts beneath our skirts and jackets and, beneath the snow-colored tablecloth, a Formica lunch table spangled with stray bagel crumbs and shreds of cheddar cheese. Today was not the Special Day that videos and posters and camera-wielding parents advertised; it was the Everyday, and all there was to live up to was a little bit of fun.

For years I have harbored a disappointment in the Great Advent of Homecoming. Like a wickless candle, so much planning and waiting and hoping are poured into its mold, but when the night arrives, there is no flame. In my experience the night has come and gone without consequence, and has passed into the flock of my days with little to mark it as its own.

As I lifted pieces of scarlet-painted pasta to my lips and listened to my friends chatter about the minutiae of life, I noticed an elderly woman approaching our table. She had a tiny frame and silver hair that just grazed her cheeks. Her eyes shone as she raised a hand toward me. “You look so beautiful,” she said, turning to look at the rest of the group, “You are all so handsome. So beautiful.” She went on, but under the din of the restaurant I could hardly discern her words. As she turned to leave, I was poised to say a last “thank you” and “goodbye,” but suddenly she had planted her purse at her feet and turned back to face us. She bent one knee and did a high kick in near-perfect form. She turned sharply then and left the restaurant, leaving us staring after her.

If I had the address, even the name of that old woman, I would find her and thank her for the wisdom of her kick. In the moment that she lifted her stocking-clad foot in the air, she adopted the shape and vibrancy of a seventeen-year-old. She was remembering her youth. Somehow, in our pleated dress and shining shoes, we had brought it back to her.

When she had gone, I took in the tableau of my friends, eating, drinking, and laughing. Alas, plans and pictures are not frivolous tradition; they are the ingredients of memory. Sitting there, I vowed to make this Homecoming, my last, memorable—because when I have converted to stockings and my own hair has gone grey, I want to have memories as vibrant and vital as a high kick on Homecoming Night.