simple action saturday : let them choose
Ah, today is senior prom day in our house. It is the last senior prom–the dress! the hair! the nails! the teetering heels!–that we will celebrate until the year 2021 when Tess is a high school senior and I am 105 years old.
As Emma and I entered into Prom Dress Search Alert Level Death Con Three this week, I was reminded of her prom dress of two years ago, the one I lifted up whole mountains and moved to get done for her. Ah, yes. The photo accompanying this post is from that year's prom.
Tonight there will be more photos of an older Emma, resplendent in a watermelon colored dress and silver heels that make her approximately six foot eight.
"Let them choose" emerged for me again this week as I pointed her to demure beautiful vintage dresses (i.e., boring, staid, old) that were made for people like me (i.e., ancient) rather than people like her (i.e., young and gorgeous and ready to bust out into the world). All I needed to do was make sure all necessary body parts were at least adequately covered (this is not easy in today's Prom Dress World, I'm just sayin') and within a budget we could afford without selling the family china.
This is her prom, not mine.
She is her own person. She is not me.Always being in choice in this wild, wacky world of ours often means letting other people choose (within clear guidelines around budget and time frame, perhaps), giving up the power that comes with choosing, saying "yes!" to the universe. In Life is a Verb, there is an exercise taught me by Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom: "Practice saying yes to everything for one day. As Madson notes, this comes with a caveat–if you are diabetic and offered pie, for example, you must first protect your health. In that case, though, you can still find a way to say yes: 'Yes, I'd love to have this pie to take home to my son who loves cherries,' she suggests."
What happens when you put your own preferences aside and accept the offers that are made to you, those choices of others? What is so hard about it? Do you have to relinquish some of that control you like so much? What do you gain by doing so?
Say yes. Let them choose. Whether it is the movie you will see or the restaurant you will go to or the prom dress they will wear to tonight's prom that looks nothing like your 1977 Gunne Sax doily dress that covered more skin than a turtleneck. Say yes. Let them choose. Try it for one day.
