Dear S,

That was AWESOME. All of it was, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Hanging out with you for three whole days in a row for the first time in YEARS.
• Getting a chance to know your fiancé husband better.
• Meeting some of your Tennessee friends finally.
• My shoes somehow (miraculously) not even smelling bad.
• Partying all day Saturday for the best reason I could ever come up with.
• Seeing your fiancé husband cry the minute he saw you walking down the aisle.
• Hearing a random stranger stop his golf cart and exclaim that you're the most beautiful bride he's ever seen.
• Getting to use a microphone to brag about how awesome you are to a room full of attentive wedding guests.
• Witnessing two super deserving people vow to be each other's others for the rest of their lives.

It all went by too fast, but I'm so glad I got to be the one standing by your side.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear 30-Second Segment of a Conversation on Monday,

For how brief you were, you made me sad and got me thinking for the subsequent 48 hours. Change, relocation, and answers to prayer: all of this was wrapped up in a short side comment as part of a larger conversation. I have what I want, and you, oh short little sentence, informed me that an old, fervent prayer for someone else has been answered. And even as I thank God for that answer, I'm realizing that I have to come to grips with the fact that just because God answers prayers we make for someone else, that doesn't necessarily mean we ourselves get to benefit from those blessings.

You showed me that God is good, and that I still have a lot of growing up to do.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear American Girl Magazine,

When I was seven years old and reading your articles about how to set up a lemonade stand, what to keep in my tree fort, and how best to decorate sidewalks with various shades of chalk, I always had a vague sense you were writing to a different audience. No one in my neighborhood would bother to buy lemonade, and I never had a tree house. The nearest sidewalk was at least a mile away. Did that mean I wasn't an American girl? No, I never questioned my citizenship or cultural status, but I did believe your world was fictional.

Then I moved to Madison. In this place, families ride their bikes together, and children walk home from school in safety, and I passed at least two lemonade stands when I was out for a walk yesterday (a walk on sidewalks, no less). People play frisbee in the park and have tree fortresses in their backyards and jump on pogo sticks in their driveways. Even the streets are crisscrossed like an apple pie crust.

I officially live in the fictitious neighborhood you always assumed I lived in two decades ago, and I'm happy to see children living out the American Girl ideal, but there's something still a bit unsettling in seeing what I had heretofore assumed was fictional suddenly come real.

Does its reality imply that subrural east-coasters bereft of sidewalks, tree houses, and lemonade stands aren't as American as their midwestern counterparts? What does your magazine say today, I wonder. Do you write for all American Girls, or just the ones who live where you do? It's no surprise to me that you're based in Middleton, WI, just six miles or so from Madison. What of the country girls? The suburbanites? The inner-city dwellers? What about the American Girls living abroad with parents who are missionaries, ambassadors, or teachers?

I'm delighted to find myself in a lovely neighborhood today, but living this out has made me wonder what you're up to now as a magazine. Maybe I'll dust off Molly (yes, I'm from the era when the dolls were all from a specific "back then") and pick up the latest copy of American Girl to see whether anything has changed.

Hugs & kisses,
B