Marine Ball 2013

Brandon in his hours-old tux and me trying to hide the baby bump.

This year was my second Marine Ball.  We never went in Cairo; the mission was so big that we wouldn't have known anyone there and it was always held on Friday (the Sabbath) because of the Friday-Saturday weekend schedule.  Last year I spent days getting everything just exactly perfect, agonizing over the Most Beautiful Dress Ever, hairstyles, and makeup while dreaming of the perfectly romantic evening Brandon and I would enjoy dancing the night away in our fancy togs.

I left rather disappointed, especially after all of the work I had put in.  I kept waiting for the night to begin - after the cocktail hour and the speeches and the video and the cake cutting and dinner, then finally the party would really start and romance would carry me away.

Romance, unfortunately, is not compatible with Azeri DJs who try to burst everyone's eardrums and a husband who doesn't like to dance.  I knew this when we married, but somehow I thought that a fancy hotel ballroom would overcome Brandon's inhibitions about dancing to club-style music in front of all of his colleagues that he would have to look in the eye the next Monday morning.  Now, if I had had alcohol on my side, this would have probably worked.  But, being Mormon, this was not an option.  This is also why nobody dances at Mormon weddings. 

This year, I knew better.  When the children asked me what I was going to do at the Marine Ball all dressed up in my pretty dress with sparkly jewelry, fancy hair, and silver shoes, I told them the truth about all adult social entertainments.  "We're going to stand around and talk to each other."  

"That's all?  You're just going to talk?!?"  Yes kids, we're just going to talk.  They don't even have any pony rides.

Somehow Hollywood is able to make all of those black-tie galas and cocktail parties and high-end events look like they're more than a bunch of people standing around talking to each other.  The talking may involve fancy clothing, but in the end it's just talking, with some food thrown in to keep everyone from starving.

So this year, having realized one of the great Truths of Life, the ball was a complete success.  I got to dress up in a fancy dress after having my hair done by someone other than me, go to a classy hotel ballroom, and spend almost six hours talking to my friends.  Since we're almost done here I had some good friends to spend those hours talking with.  I love this lifestyle that gives me so many people to become close with, people that don't care if I'm cool or funny or even that interesting, just people who care about helping each other feel like this is our home.  I'm sad that we're leaving in a few months and the thread of that friendship will break.  Of course we'll keep in touch but it won't be the same, living together in a foreign country, lending each other peanut butter and 1/4 inch elastic, making our children play together so we can complain about the traffic or long hours our husbands' work.  My friends make my life bigger because theirs are part of it.

We finally left at 11:45, never having made it back into the ballroom after post-dinner lipstick application, having too much fun talking with friends.  I had told the babysitter we'd be back by 11:30, and if it hadn't been for that we probably would have stayed - and even danced - until the staff started turning the lights off to send everyone home.

But alas, all fun things have to end some time, and as I pulled all sixty-eight hairpins out, scrubbed off the makeup, and hung up my sparky ball gown in the very back corner of my closet, I sighed a little sigh as life returned back to normal.  Until next year.  And then I had to concede that perhaps, just a little, Hollywood might have gotten it right.