Yesterday night was the high school homecoming dance, the very first homecoming dance I�ve ever been involved with. (I attended high school in the years when neither proms nor homecomings occurred. There may be something to be said for a teach-in but you can�t really dress up for one.) I had made Kat a homecoming dress and she looked gorgeous. If I hadn�t known what good sense she has, it would have been scary.

I made her homecoming dress as I�ve made most of the other �occasion� dresses in her life. She tells me the girls have stopped asking where she gets the dresses because there is no point. My sewing allows her good dresses to be one of a kind. Kat never worries that someone else will show up wearing the same dress.

This dress was one of my better creations. It is an ankle-length Chinese-style dress made from plum-colored satin with some flowers and silver threads on it. The fabric is exactly what you would expect in a Chinese dress. The dress fits in a long column which works quite well on a girl whose very long legs are one of her best physical assets. (They are not one of her best assets. Her generosity and her mind are her best assets.) The dress has a false opening running from the Chinese-style collar to the cap sleeve on the left side. That false opening has true fabric buttons I made by following instructions that could have been macrame instructions and a frog-closure surrounding the buttons.

We pulled the top of Kat�s long, blonde hair back and made a bun. We left the rest flowing free. Into the bun, we put gold hair sticks. We had looked for purple hair sticks but could not find them. On her feet, she wore some black, high-heel sandals. She intended to dump the shoes when she did any actual dancing. Girls today apparently are sensible enough to ditch the shoes at the door but not sensible enough to wear sensible shoes.

I went out and got 800 film for the occasion. Kat�s blue eyes are so light that it is impossible to take a flash picture and not have her come out looking like a science fiction creature. I had hoped to take outdoor pictures but it is pouring out there. Even if she had been willing to stand in the rain and ruin her hair for me, outside had no more light than inside.

She is not going with a boy. The Boyfriend seems to have faded away with the end of summer and the start of school. She saw no reason to skip homecoming just for lack of a date. Apparently, going with a group of girls is acceptable and she didn�t intend to miss the fun�and she didn�t. She came home bubbling over..

She�s growing up so fast. She�s only fourteen but she could easily have passed for sixteen last night. All too soon sending Kat off to homecoming will pass and I will find myself waiting, for vacation, until Kat comes home.

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