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One Last Rager Before COVID

By: Izabella Ibarro

Ever since I was a little girl, I had always wanted to have a Quinceañera. Growing up as a Mexican-American, I attended many quinces where the girl would be wearing this big dress and perform all these dances, some traditional and some modern. The tradition first started in the 1500s and is believed to be a mix of Aztec ceremonies and coming-of-age rituals for their tribe members and the Roman Catholic mass that came from the Spanish Conquistadors. Today, Quinceañeras wear big dresses with hoop skirts underneath to make them even bigger in a color they like and have a huge celebration. Dresses were originally white as the girls would celebrate their 15th birthday as well as their wedding. That is not the case nowadays, thankfully. The version now is full of family, fun, and love. This is the biggest party a girl will have, so she has to make it count. As I attended the parties as a child, I made a mental note of everything I liked so I could incorporate it into my own quince one day.

The actual planning started just after my 13th birthday in February of 2018. That’s when I realized, “Oh my god… this is actually happening. I’m actually going to have a Quinceañera.” I couldn’t believe it. The thing I had been dreaming of since I was a child was going to happen. There were countless hours spent planning details with my mom, grandmothers, and many aunts. I thought I knew what I wanted and even now I question if I made the right decision on my quince. In the beginning, I always said that I wanted a royal blue dress with gold accents on it. My mom and I tried one store with no luck. We tried another store: Peaches Boutique. My mom and I looked for blue and gold dresses, but once again had no success. I was giving up hope and I wanted to try another store, but my mom encouraged me to try other colors. I was very stubborn and initially refused, but gave in eventually and tried a pink dress that had a sweetheart neckline and gold accents. I adored it, but I didn’t feel like it was “the one”. I tried on that same style of dress, but in burgundy. I fell in love with it at once. I didn’t want to take it off, which the sales associate helping us told us that that was usually how a girl chose her dress. We bought my dress with some gold glitter sneakers and a golden tiara and my purchases were set. Now, I had to choose my court.

A court is those who accompany the Quinceañera on her special day. Damas and chambelanes (which translate to dames/maids and chamberlains) usually have some sort of matching dress or suit with the quince. Now, they’re both completely optional and can be made up of whoever the quince wants. Typically, they’re fellow 15-year-old friends or other family members of similar ages. Usually, I am a stickler for tradition, but since I had already gone my own way with the non-traditional color dress, I decided to have a non-traditional court as well. I chose to have my parents’ brothers. My dad’s three brothers and my mom’s brother. 3 out of 4 were in their 30s and the youngest was around 23 at the time. Those four men were my court and I wouldn’t change that for the world. They put so much effort into it that I know no 15-year-old would. 15-year-old boys were and are typically ashamed of the dances and tended to close in on themselves and be shy, but not my uncles. They were shameless and I loved every single second of it, as did all of my guests, but especially my aunts, and my uncles’ wives. They didn’t care who saw them; they just had the time of their lives and were there for me. That’s all I could ever ask for. I formally asked them to be my court and they were so happy. They were so energetic and full of life, hyping me up and making me feel like a goddess.

Now that they were formally asked, it was time to choose the songs and begin planning the choreography. Luckily, my godmother had choreographed many quinces before so we lucked out. First practice: just my godmother and me. All of my uncles were busy and rightfully so because one of them had 6 kids at the time (now 7). Looking back, I would have definitely changed my music and overall theme because I was just going along with whatever was easiest and what I thought I wanted in the beginning was not what I wanted when the quince came. We had decided on a masquerade theme, though hardly anyone wore any masks, including myself. I wish I had gone with a Beauty and the Beast theme simply because I am more passionate about it and it is probably my favorite Disney film, incorporating aspects from the 1991 and 2017 versions. I made up for it at my senior prom, however, because I had a custom-made yellow ball gown. Getting back to the dances, once we finally got everyone together, we brainstormed and
once we settled on our songs, practice began. We would practice on Sundays, but as the quince approached, we added Wednesdays to our practice schedule. We were doing very well and were getting into the swing of things… until the Wednesday before my quince. The quince was on February 9th of 2020 (a month before COVID struck the world) and on Wednesday, February 5th, 2020, we were practicing like normal. We had already practiced the waltz in my dress so we were good to go for that. We got to practice our last song in our routine, and everything had been going well. I had to get up on two of my uncles’ knees and jump forward off of them. However, instead of jumping forward, I fell back and landed on my tailbone on the hard cement floor of our practice space. I was helped up and managed to contain my tears of pain. One of my uncles then jokingly smacked me and I burst into tears. My dad’s three brothers all hugged me and comforted me, wiping away my tears and hugging me close. They are my rocks, all of us having grown incredibly close after my dad passed when I was little. Now, obviously, me having an injury just days before my Quinceañera was one of the worst-case scenarios that could have happened. I spent the next few days icing myself and taking ibuprofen religiously to lessen my pain.

The day of my Quinceañera came quicker than we expected. Now, it was time to get ready. My family has a hair salon so my mom did my hair and one of the workers did my makeup. My hair was an inch or two above my hips and was curled, teased, and combed over to create a dome that my tiara could rest on and be set in place with many bobby pins so that it would not fall off during my dances. I went home and was helped to be corseted into my dress by my mother and aunt, lacing me up until I was all settled and tied so tightly, I felt like Rose from Titanic with the bedpost being laced up by her handmaid and mother. Once I was dressed and pictures at home were taken, we were to be loaded up and taken to church. Tradition is to have a mass and I did, but I had a small one because I did not want so much pomp and circumstance more than I already had for my party. It was nice and intimate at the church of my old school where I knew the priest well. The mass itself was less than an hour long with myself reading in Spanish, bringing a bouquet of roses for La Virgen de Guadalupe and praying to her for her guidance, protection, and love. After the mass, the party bus took my immediate family and I to my venue: the Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier. My stepfather’s sister worked there so we got a nice discount on it and my party was the last they ever had there before COVID. I posed for hundreds of pictures and greeted everyone personally as they came in, or later on making my rounds to the various tables full of people I knew and did not know. Greeting everyone is mandatory or else you will seem unmannered and that your parents did not do a good job of raising you. Everything was going perfectly and my paternal grandfather even sang to me with the mariachis. Then came the tear-jerker: the father-daughter dance.

My father died in a car crash when I was four years old and so I had been raised by my mother and family for most of my life. There are no words to describe how difficult it was to grow up without my dad. He was my favorite person, my rock, and my entire world. My world was turned upside down when I was told that my papi would not be coming home. My mom and I had been in Mexico during the accident since she had to be in her home country to get her residency here in the U. S., so I never got to say goodbye. As I grew older, I was never like the other kids in school. They all had living parents meanwhile I was just the girl with a dead dad and a single mom. I will be eternally grateful to my grandparents, aunts, and uncles for helping to raise me. It really does take a village. Having all those people there for me on my special day showed me how much I am loved and cared for. My grandfather, my dad’s dad, stepped in for my dad during my dance. He wore a mask of my dad’s face and danced with me to my favorite song from the movie I would watch all the time with my dad, “You’ll be in my Heart’ from Disney’s Tarzan. He held me as we danced, tears streaming down my face as I sobbed into his chest. I finished the dance with my ‘dad’ and the song changed so I could dance with my grandpa now. He took off the mask and I had never in my life seen him cry before, but he was sobbing as much as I was, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. We held each other tightly until it was time to dance with my grandpa from my mom’s side, though out of the corner of my eye, I saw my uncles wiping their eyes and my grandpa hugging them and hugging my stepdad as well. We danced and he wiped away my tears. I finished the dances with my grandfathers and then came the time to dance with my stepfather, Leo. He married my mom when I was 10 and he is the reason I now have my little sister, who was born when I was 11. Her name is Fiorella and she is quite the little spitfire. Leo sang to me as we danced, telling me how much he loved me and was proud of me.

By the time I finished the dances with my paternal figures, there was not a dry eye in the room. I was ushered to a personal room to have my makeup touched up and my eyelashes reglued since they fell off with my tears in time for my waltz. I was still sniffling by the time I got back to the dance floor. I took some deep breaths and regained my bearings in time for my waltz to start. That was our best dance, the one that we had spent the most time practicing. My uncles had some leeway to mess up since most eyes would be on me. However, that made me more nervous because I was the one who made the mistakes that night, doing my best to follow their leads. I twirled and jumped, my gown swaying and shining brightly in sync with my spins. I left a trail of glitter behind everywhere I went. The pinnacle of the waltz came: the big lift. I was most nervous about it. One uncle would support all of my weight while the others held me by the waist and hips to keep me steady. We executed the lift and I felt light as a feather, my uncle told me later on that I was weightless in the lift, probably from all the adrenaline pumping through our veins. We got thunderous applause for our waltz as we settled and all hugged each other. Then was a costume change into my surprise dance outfit: a black jumpsuit with a lace halter top. Red lipstick was applied to my lips to make them stand out as I danced. My uncles and I danced and danced, having the time of our lives as we performed our routines. We were all sweaty and panting by the end of it, hair disheveled a bit. We hugged and laughed at the end of it all again, with applause and cheers filling the room as I thanked them and told them I loved them.

Soon afterwards, I had to change back into my dress and make my rounds once again, but with more fun. I spent a lot of time on the dancefloor, dancing with any and everyone. I even took off my shoes so I was barefoot for the rest of the night. The rest of the night was a blur, full of dancing and laughter and love. I cut my cake, took more pictures, danced some more until it was nearing midnight. Most everyone was gone and I was the happiest I have ever been in my life. Having a Quinceañera is something that I would never want to trade or give away. It was the most special day of my life, one last rager before the world fell apart, as I like to say. Looking back, I am glad that we all got to experience one last big party before COVID. I was most certainly done with parties for a while since my social battery can run out quickly. To this day, my family members still tell me about how much fun they had and how much they loved my quince. I am most certainly biased when I say that that was the best party I have ever been to in my entire life.