Prom - Music Video Style

So last month, a lot went down in my family.  My aunt died of complications from diabetes (and not really taking care of herself, especially the diabetes), leaving her 16 year old daughter two weeks before prom.  Now, I know some of you are wondering why I'm so worried about my cousin going to prom when her mother just died.  But let's put this in perspective for a second.  She's had to grow up a lot in her 16 years.  When she was 7, she came to live with me and my parents while I was in high school (her brother was born, and both he and my aunt were in the hospital for a bit...again she didn't really take very good care of herself considering her diabetes and being pregnant...), and once her brother was born and she went home, she had to grow up quickly and take care of her brother while the men came and went in her mother's life.  That being said, my cousin is a remarkable woman.  She's loving, giving, and beautiful, both inside and out; however, she didn't know what was going to happen to her when her mother died.  We didn't either.  We knew she wasn't going to end up in foster care, especially with so many of us able to take care of her; hell, she'd been living with another cousin for the past two years and all of a sudden someone sticks their nose where it doesn't belong and runs to child services saying she was in danger (ummm, I don't think so.  If she'd been in danger, don't you think something would've happened in the past two years?  But with child services trying to take her away, we knew the only thing we could do to keep her from going to foster care was to move her two states away to live with my parents again).  So with all these life changes occurring all at once, we wanted to try to make everything as normal for her as possible.  And since prom is such a big event for high schoolers, we wanted to make it as memorable as possible, especially since it was the last school sanctioned event she would attend with her lifelong friends before moving.

So let's get back to the whole my cousin is beautiful statement I made earlier.  She is.  And not beautiful in a societally sanctioned way...she's not a size 0 with legs to Canada and perfect teeth and whatever else beauty magazines will have you believe is beautiful.  She's real world beautiful - she's average height with proportional features and a heart to make Mother Theresa jealous.  And she's a lot more mature than some 20-somethings, and smarter than a lot of 20-somethings too.  I like to think of her as that intriguing not-square package under the tree at Christmas time -- that one that doesn't quite fit in with the rest, but it's intriguing to see what's inside because you know such a unique package has to have something amazing inside it!  You know the one I'm talking about...it's not square, but not round.  Not really geometric in any way, which makes it harder to wrap, but you put extra care to wrap it nicely anyway because you don't want anyone to peek at the great stuff inside and spoil the surprise.  Now, I know she's beautiful and everyone in the family knows she's beautiful, and her friends know she's beautiful, but she doesn't know she's beautiful -- I don't really think it's a self-confidence issue here, rather I think it has to do with society trying to fit her into a tall, thin, tan person, and that's just not her.  So here's where the music video comes in to play - when I took her prom dress shopping, I realized how much she struggles with how beautiful she is.  We're there in the mall and she's trying on the same dresses that the other girls (who are size 0) are trying on and she's hearing all the other girls talk about how they need a smaller size and she's getting more disheartened by the minute.  Rather than make her stay in the department store not finding anything that she really loves (because in this family, if you don't love it, you don't buy it - that's just how we roll).  So, understandably, my cousin was very down at this point in time and was ready to throw in the towel and decide to not go to prom.  I wasn't having any of that.  She had been talking all day about a specialty store that all her friends had gone to for their prom dresses and she said she'd never get to go there because it was so expensive and she couldn't afford it.  Guess what, sister...we went to that store and we found a dress that she absolutely LOVED!  She glowed!  It was the first time I'd really seen her smile - genuinely smile - since she lived with us all those years ago!  So, of course, we bought it.  And prom was back on.

Now, I live two states away and didn't know if I'd have the weekend off work (remember, I still wait tables...) to go down and help her get ready - she looked so downtrodden that I wouldn't be able to help her get ready since I had helped her find a dress and jewelry and shoes, so I had to get the weekend off work - come hell or high water I was going to help her get ready for prom.  The great thing was that for two weeks, my family (especially my mother, who is really bad at keeping secrets) and her boyfriend (my cousin's boyfriend...not my mom's boyfriend - she's married) were able to keep the secret that I was coming down to help her get ready.  She called me the night before prom as I was 30 minutes away from the hotel they were staying at (and where I would be staying directly across the hall!!! - I'll let it sink in for a minute how difficult it is to stay hidden from a 16 year old when you're directly across the hall and she desperately wants you to come help her get ready for prom so your mother doesn't give her hair by GE in the morning...) to see if I could help her find hairstyles that she liked that my mother could feasibly do.  The whole time I was trying not to let on that I would be there in 30 minutes and that I had taken off just one day to drive down and get her ready for prom and then head back home so I could go to work -- I wanted to surprise her first thing in the morning for breakfast.  Thankfully, we stayed hidden all night and that morning for breakfast, she was in for one of the best surprises that week!  I made my husband video the entire day and I took pictures all day to document it, and I came home and made a music video.  So here's the video.  Enjoy!