A Mother-Daughter Brunch and Fashion Show

My daughter went to an all-girls high school. One of my favorite events of the year was the mother-daughter brunch held each spring. After the meal at a hotel downtown, the senior class put on a fashion show, with the styles selected from several major retailers in our area. Each clothing store offered a different theme—casual clothes, beach wear, formals, etc.

I loved the fashion shows, which were an opportunity for the seniors to have a bit of fun after four years of hard work. Not every girl in the senior class participated, but most did—even those who were shy or overweight or who never wore anything but the school uniform or jeans. The show was a rite of passage. Kudos always went to the seniors willing to wear a swimsuit in public.

I worked in a corporate environment largely populated by males, and there was more estrogen in that hotel dining room than I was accustomed to. These young women strutted their stuff down the runway, proclaiming themselves young adults now out of the schoolroom as campily as they could. They showed their potential as independent women of the world, whether in bikini or gown or business wear.

My daughter and I attended this brunch all four years. The first three times I watched the show, I looked forward to the year my daughter would be a senior. I anticipated her role. What clothes would she model? Would she enjoy it as much as most of the girls seemed to? What glimpse into her future would I see?

Her senior year finally came. She didn’t tell me much about what she would be modeling, other than that it would be in the business wear section.

When that portion of the show began, I watched the girls parade in skirts and slacks. I saw them as they would be not too long into the future, after their college years when they would—most of them—enter the professional world.

My daughter is in white. Though she’d never wear a tie like that these days.

And there came my daughter. My tall, beautiful, intelligent daughter, striding down the runway in a white pantsuit, looking like the successful attorney she wanted to be.

Like the successful attorney she has since become.

I was granted a vision of the future that spring morning, now fourteen years in the past. I loved it—and her—then. I love her more now. She has become a strong, independent woman—both book-smart and street-smart, athletic, attractive, and caring. I couldn’t have asked for more from a daughter than she has given her father and me over the years.

As I’ve written before, she was my Mother’s Day baby—she has a birthday this week. I look back on her runway day and smile at the past. I smile even more at the present. And I await the future, still smiling.

Happy birthday, daughter!

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