I was taken aback by the love, good feeling, and emotion touched off all over the country by our bringing a carload of fancy prom dresses to Bishop Maginn High School so the young women in the school could see them, try them on, and keep them to wear at their prom, coming up next month.

The Catholic Diocese of Albany wrote on its Facebook page that the gown story was about much more than a rite of passage, “it is about big hearts and generosity, fellowship and community.” They reprinted my blog post.

I got more praise for writing about the gowns than for almost anything I remember writing.

By morning, there were more than 100 messages waiting for me on social media and my blog, from men and women thanking me for the story. They were a lot like Fred’s:

“OMG! Thru all the hardships, trauma, and ugliness in their lives, these girls (young women) get to shine w a bit of glamor and “sashay.” You GO, grrrls! drop all the worries and become what you were meant to be, if even for one night!” Most of the messages were from women, rejoicing in the gown story.

Well said. The gown story is also about women and the sometimes powerful ways in which they connect to one another.

Michele wrote: “I think you made some fantastic gals very happy!! Love does live!

In divided and angry America, this was a story almost everyone could relate to. That is important to remember and uplifting. Love does live, and so does truth and good.

This gown donation was a dream of Tania Woodward, a loving Mansion aide and a good friend who could never afford a prom dress when she was a child but collected them for much of her life with the idea in the back of her head that she might one day give them to children just like her, who fantasized about being Cinderalla, just for once.

Like Tania, they knew they probably would never get there.

(Tania Woodward, with her prom dresses)

As a man who has never been to a prom, I was surprised and deeply moved by what I was seeing, by how excited the girls were, how supportive and generous they were to one another, and how much it meant to people beyond this community who were reading about it on my blog.

Yet I almost turned down the offer of the gowns. I didn’t get it.

I didn’t think these girls would be interested.

None of them are showy, none measure themselves or others by clothes, and all have ambitions in the workplace beyond school. The students in the school have often asked me for help, but no one has ever asked me to buy them a gown or fancy suit.

I was also slow to grasp the importance and emotional implications, and I was surprised by the very intense feeling and love around the prom dress distribution.

What I saw made me see once again that while we know (most of us) that women and men are equal, there are also ways in which they are profoundly different, which is essential to acknowledge and understand.

I felt yesterday that while the scene brought me to tears, I needed to know more about what was happening to understand it as a man,  and I also realized that this was not something most men, including myself, could explain by themselves.

I see in many women empathy, community, and nurturing impulses that are often missing from men or that men ridicule and trivialize or bury deep inside of themselves.

Our world would be a lot more peaceful without men. Many men in our time, as in all times,  are busy spreading hatred and lies and shedding blood and promoting division for money and power.

Women don’t like to kill people as a rule. Beyond that, they show the world that they are as competent and powerful as anyone to manage big things while rarely hurting others.

There is much hope in the world for that, perhaps the only hope.

I felt this so strongly yesterday watching the women’s circle that got the dresses, sent the dresses, and spread joy and happiness while the girls zipped each other, encouraged each other, praised each other, and shared their happiness. It was a wonderful thing to see.

Several men came in, mostly to laugh and try on the gowns; they wanted fun pictures for TikTok.

Teachers, parents, and strangers online were all loving the story.

After yesterday, I got it.

But I decided to ask three of the most intelligent and most thoughtful women I know to help explain it to me so I could write about it. I’m not comfortable explaining women.

One of the women was Kitty Farnham, a former college administrator, and friend; another was Maria, a fiercely independent artist and feminist who would never be caught dead at a prom or wearing a prom dress but who loved sorting the dresses, pairing them to the students and helping them dress and make choices.

I’ve rarely seen her so happy.

The other was Sue Silverstein, my dear friend, and partner in do-gooding at the school. She is a teacher, an angel, a good and faithful Christian, and someone who has taught, helped and encouraged refugee children for many years.

She knows their culture and history as well or better than anyone.

Women, I saw, didn’t need the prom experience to be explained to them. They all seemed to get it instantly.

Left or right, red or blue, Republican or Democrat, they understood why the gowns were a great gift and why the refugee students would be thrilled to get them.

I would describe all three women as feminists,  thoughtful thinkers, champions of women’s rights, and the long search for dignity and equality.

Like so many refugee children, Kitty Farnham often imagined herself as a princess when she was young, her father would never have spent money on a prom dress, and she never made it to a prom.

“I think I fantasized about dressing up, being a princess at times, even though I thought it was far beyond my reach. The idea of the princess was baked into us, I always wanted to have a gown, but I doubt I would have worn one. I think of it as offering the possibility of transformation.”

Like almost every woman I know, Kitty had dolls and loved to dress them up.

She said she could understand the joy and shock of poor children in complex lives rejoicing when these beautiful gowns landed on them without charge and no strings attached.

“That,” she said, doesn’t happen outside of a dream. I love the circle, from Tania Woodward to Bishop Maginn to Sue Silvertein and these girls. It’s beautiful.”

Maria said that she never went to a prom either and would never wear one of the dresses she was helping other women tried on yesterday. “But I think the Princess is inside at times,” she said.

Maria remembers buying a Sari on her trip to India, looking in the mirror, and thinking, “wow, I look like a princess.”

It isn’t that she wants to be a princess or ever expects to be one.

She remembers being terrified after getting her nails polished – her father forbid his daughters to wear any makeup. “It was just an instinct. I thought of it as being glamorous. It’s what we grow up seeing in our families and on TV, or now, the Internet.”

She agreed there was also a nurturing instinct involved, a kind of animal grooming; she said something extraordinary. She saw this while helping the girls choose their gowns and allowing them to try them on and get zipped up in the ladies’ room with other girls who helped and supported one another.

They all shouted encouragement, urged the shy girls to find a gown, and praised those who did.

(I saw this when the gowns were distributed; patience and generosity, consideration for the more minor and the weaker and shy kids, and praise and encouragement for the bolder ones.)

Some girls were not permitted to go to dances or proms, but they were happy for those who were, and they wanted to help out.

Sue called me between classes at the school. She had the same feelings about yesterday, something beautiful was happening.

“The refugee girls mostly grew up in camps,” she said, “they all watched Disney movies and thought this was what it was like in America – a land of great wealth and princesses.”

The “princess moments,” as Sue called them, were bred into their consciousness for years, and many were shocked to find America different than the Disney movie’s portrayal of life. But the idea of the princess lives inside of them.

In their cultures, women love to dress up. “But there are only two times in life when they can dress up and look like a princess, one is at their prom, and the other is when they get married.”

She said the gowns are the “princess moments” for them, and for someone to show up out of the blue and give them all of these beautiful gowns for free is shocking to them, a kind of miracle.

I also called Tania Woodward yesterday and asked her why she had so many gowns and wanted to give them away. She said she knew what it was like to be poor and not be able to buy beautiful and glamorous clothes.

“I know what it feels like,” she said,” and when I looked at your blog and saw the stories about their prom, I knew I had to do this to get the gowns I have collected for years to them.”

This all made great sense to me, and I kept going back the Kitty  Farnham’s idea of the “possibility of transformation.”

I think that is what the gowns evoked in the art room yesterday as Sue and Maria pulled out one after another, and the girls rushed off to try them on we’re about: the possibility of transformation.

These girls have had challenging, complex, or even horrific lives. Many grew up in frightening and dangerous refugee camps where their families had fled from war, genocide, and religious persecution.

There, like manna from heaven, there was the possibility of transformation. Put on one of those gowns, and you can have your “princess moment,” at least for a day.

I was grateful to be there and see it and learn from it. Women are equal to men. But they are also very different from men, something I don’t want ever to forget. And would love to emulate.