This is a perfect day to honor my dear friend Sara. We were pen pals in third grade, when I lived in Illinois and she lived in the distant land of Iowa, all the way across the Mississippi River, a whole five or ten miles from me.

The pen pal thing was devised as a writing project for school. I assume it happened because my teacher, Mrs. Mohler, was buddies with Sara’s teacher and they thought this would be a fun way to scam us brats into practicing composition and penmanship. Poor Sara was the big loser on that front. I’m pretty sure I wrote delightful and hilarious letters, but I’m also pretty sure that they were at least—probably more than—5 percent illegible. (Sara had beautiful penmanship. I don’t know if she still does. Facebook Messenger does not require that particular skill.)

My memory is shot, so I don’t remember how many of these letters were exchanged as part of the actual project. I think maybe it was two letters from each participant? And I suspect I still have them in a box somewhere, but it would take hours I don’t have right now to unearth them. I also don’t know how successful this project was overall and whether any of my classmates hit it off with their writing partners. But Sara and I were a happy match. Phone numbers were exchanged, visits were paid, sleepovers were held, birthday party invitations were exchanged. Her immaculately appropriate mom took us to see Six Pack. My entirely inappropriate parents took us to see Stripes. We lost touch when I moved to Florida—ironic considering we were pen pals.

Something like 15 years later, her mom found me on Facebook and we reconnected. By that time Sara was married and had a baby and lived in Wisconsin; I was engaged and living in Virginia. We had both gone into news: I did print, she did broadcast. We basically picked up as if we had never left off. We had lunch when she brought her family to DC a couple years later; we met up for an afternoon when the hubs and I took a kid-free anniversary trip to Chicago. We both got into baking: My sloppy self focuses on cookies, she makes gorgeously detail-oriented cakes. My only complaint about her is that we have not seen each other since I moved back to her time zone. Sara! When are we going to make this happen? At the very least, can we plan five years ahead and do a 50^th anniversary thing? That seems worth celebrating!