On the shelf

My mother was a debutante, back when "coming out" meant a young lady was presented to society as being available for suitable young men to consider as marriage material. The houses in her neighborhood had ballrooms and staff for such festivities, and personal shoppers were standing by to make sure she was wearing a different evening frock for each event, in case a picture should make it into the society pages. And they did.

From the time she graduated from high school to the time she married, her name features in dozens of columns dubbed "World of Women" and "Pauline's Causette." She is usually throwing or attending a party to celebrate pending nuptials for her sorority sisters, or among the bevy of matching bridesmaids pictured in grainy black and white. 

After she graduated from high school, she moved on to college, where she joined a sorority. For a young women who had grown up as an only child, it brought her a special joy, and she kept in contact with the brides-elect for the rest of her life, even when distance separated them. 

From her stories, both told and written, we know there were several gentlemen deemed suitable by her parents, but as things got serious, there always seemed to be flaws. Her father invested a small fortune in tennis lessons, piano lessons, and even cooking lessons: none of them really "stuck." She didn't play tennis well; she was tone deaf so couldn't hear the wrong notes when she played piano. But it wasn't always her: there was the fellow who was an artist--not a financially viable prospect, though we do have a lovely oil he gifted her.

After I sifted through her scrapbooks, I checked to see what else online archives could provide me, and I struck gold. In the early 50s, when she is very much was still "viable"--and an undergrad, I note, the papers refer to her in passing as a bride-elect; then the wedding date is set for the summer after her graduation, with the usual list of attendants and happy parents. Only thing is, I have never heard of the fellow, and it appears that wedding never happened. 

The papers go quiet for a few years as most of her friends are now married (right out of college, naturally). I know from my mother that she was interested in pursuing graduate studies, but her father insisted that she prove she could make enough to support herself. The unspoken message was that if she wasn't going to get married, she'd have to learn to make her own money. So, together with two other sorority sisters, she rented an apartment, and landed herself a job as a secretary at Del Monte. 

There is a glimmer of hope in 1954 when one paper notes that she caught the bridal bouquet--of one of her roommates. And then a terse, almost sad mention in the spring of 1958 noting that she joined the Spinsters and Dames Ball: "… the sole spinster of the contingent." 

There is a happy ending--before she was officially "on the shelf" an article notes that her parents "informally announce" the pending nuptials--this time to my father. She was 27.