So part of why the weekend was so hectic was because Kavi had asked if she and her friends could rent an Airbnb in Michigan for a prom house weekend. I admit to being a little hesitant — this isn’t a tradition I grew up with, and I was having worried visions of teen drinking + swimming pools / ocean.
But I guess prom house is a pretty common Midwest thing (some families have grandparents with lake houses, etc.), and Kavi and her friends are pretty level-headed; she doesn’t really drink yet, and even the ones that do drink are good about not drinking and driving.
So honestly, I was mostly fretting about the ocean / pool part. Kev and I talked it over, and we decided that we’d feel better about it if there was an adult nearby at least, in case of emergencies.
I looked at the place they wanted to rent (13 teens, divided up to about $100 each for two nights’ stay), and found a nearby hotel for me. In the end, two other moms ended up coming along — one stayed at the Airbnb (it had space for 14), and the other shared my hotel room.
(I’d recommend the place — https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1102454291538303482 — there are two other properties on site, so you could potentially host an even larger group, nice for family reunions and girlfriend get-togethers…)
I admit, I still might’ve hesitated, except for one contributing factor — prom was Saturday, and Sunday was Kavi’s 18th birthday. If this was what she wanted to do to celebrate her birthday as a new-minted adult, we didn’t want to say no.
It all went fine in the end. There was a little drama the first night, as it turned out that a group of boys they knew from their high school had ended up in a similar house about 5 minutes down the road, and they invited the boys over, and it started getting raucous around 1 a.m. and I had to go out a couple times and remind them that quiet hours started at 10 p.m., and they needed to keep it down.
But the kids were respectful (even though they’re not actually kids anymore — they were almost all 18 already), and hushed when I asked them to hush, and really, it all went fine.
I ended up getting less work done than I’d hoped — I’d been thinking of it as a little bit of a writing retreat, but I did want to spend some time with Kavi on her birthday, and it was a good opportunity to get to know some of the kids better (though who knows how many of the 13 will stay in touch after graduation?).
We kept them well supplied with junk food (fried chicken and donuts is the breakfast of champions, apparently).
You can’t quite read the candle, but it says “Your childhood has expired.” Which Kavi laughed at, but also says was a little mean. I think she was having some feelings this weekend about being an adult technically, but not actually feeling like an adult yet — and I was having a LOT of feelings along those lines too.
I look at her, and simultaneously am pleased by and proud of the adult she’s becoming — and I miss every iteration of the little one she used to be. Even the infant stage, when I was getting no sleep and was horribly cranky. I miss the warm weight of her 7 lb. 6 oz. body against my chest.
But hey, I have a 18-year-old who’s willing to have me come along for her birthday prom house party — that’s no small blessing. Time to start planning how often I can reasonably ‘drop in’ on her in college, I guess…
