Here comes the bride....(gulp)
She's always had quite an imagination, this daughter of ours, and we've done everything we could to encourage it to blossom.

When she was 3, her favorite game to play was school bus, and she'd line up all the chairs in the house and then get into the 'driver's seat,' cautioning everyone to sit down and fasten their seat belts. (And having seen the way she drives in her favorite arcade game, that's just as well. Does the term "hell on wheels" mean anything to you?)

It means we've often had imaginary playmates-I'm often called upon to make pancakes not just for Betsy, but for Tori and Whitney and Hope and Stephen and Jaylen-none of whom are actually standing anywhere but in the mind of our child. But I play along every time, especially when she uses a half-dozen different voices to thank me, and I am careful to repeat every name in my "you're welcomes."

I like it. I do. It's nice to see where all she goes and the details in the scenarios she spins.

Today, she decided, is her wedding day. She's going to marry Stephen, she says. (Fickle girl. Last year before we moved here, it was Colin, a little Aussie boy who was utterly charming, whom she fell for on the spot the minute she met him, saying "Oh my GOSH, I HAVE to marry you!")

But now it's Stephen. I've met him, when I went to school for her Valentine party, with cookies and icings and decorating candies, when I watched the kids pile a half-pound of candy atop their cookie before devouring it. And he's a cutie. (Actually, so is William R.-not to be confused with William C.-who has already called her! I am so not ready for this!)

So she put on her favorite dress-up dress. Vivid pink satin, someone's prom dress from at least ten years ago, which I bought for a dollar so she could be a princess for Halloween. That year she wore a turquoise glittery tiara, and pink glittery gloves, and a fake fur cape, and ten pounds of costume jewelry, and was completely happy. Mom's got imagination, too, and the kid's got style! (This past year she was Cinderella, in a blue dress with a different tiara and ten pounds of jewelry. And she was equally happy.)

I gave her a bouquet of purple silk flowers (iris, I think they're meant to be) and her wedding ring (a copy of THE ring from Lord of the Rings. (It was attached to a bookmark I got five years ago.) Then she decided she needed to fly to New York City for the wedding, and she bundled her sleeping bag and I

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