{"id":94173,"date":"2021-06-26T16:52:17","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T20:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=94173"},"modified":"2021-06-26T16:52:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T20:52:17","slug":"no-8-the-prom-dress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/no-8-the-prom-dress\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 8 &#8211; The Prom Dress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>No. 8 &#8211; The Prom Dress<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>By Nandhini G. Natarajan<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was a special joy,<\/p>\n<p>a milestone for my high school<\/p>\n<p>Downs Syndrome daughter.<\/p>\n<p>She was going to the prom,<\/p>\n<p>just like her sister, Anjali<\/p>\n<p>the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>Her Best Buddy was taking her.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>(I wanted to adopt<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>the best buddy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But her parents <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>refused.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I pulled out all stops.<\/p>\n<p>No dress was good enough<\/p>\n<p>for this occasion.<\/p>\n<p>I made a dark-pink satin gown<\/p>\n<p>And got shoes to match.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Alas, there was an emergency<\/p>\n<p>on that momentous day,<\/p>\n<p>I would be out of town.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Anjali was cajoled<\/p>\n<p>to come from college<\/p>\n<p>and dress her sister for the day.<\/p>\n<p>I was reassured on the<\/p>\n<p>transatlantic call<\/p>\n<p>that Piya looked<\/p>\n<p>splendid.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I longed to see the pictures.<\/p>\n<p>When I did, I wept.<\/p>\n<p>Her father came over to point<\/p>\n<p>out proudly.<\/p>\n<p><em>I even put on her tights which Anjali had forgotten.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And there it was between the lovely satin dress,<\/p>\n<p>and the lovely matching shoes.<\/p>\n<p>A pair of pure white,<\/p>\n<p>thick, woolen stockings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No. 8 &#8211; The Prom Dress By Nandhini G. Natarajan &nbsp; It was a special joy, a milestone for my high school Downs Syndrome daughter. She was going to the prom, just like her sister, Anjali the previous year. Her Best Buddy was taking her&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2873,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94182,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94173\/revisions\/94182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}