Dear Judy, 

As I’ve told you before, Just as Long as We’re Together is one of my all-time favorite books. So much so that my copy from 4th grade was on my shelf throughout high school, and made the trip with me to a college dorm and a first apartment and my adult home. 

So why did I never read Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson! 

And where is the Allison book? 

Checking the copyright date … 1993. What was I doing in 1993? Junior high. No more Scholastic Book Clubs and honestly not a lot of reading in my English classes (looking at you yellow Warriner’s English book and your countless lessons), and I was coping with long miserable days in junior high by escaping into Danielle Steele novels. 

Finally, reading the follow up to Just as Long as We’re Together, some 30 years later, I loved its honesty and its very real look at how, as the quote from Anna Karenina featured in the book says, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

We get glimpses of Rachel’s anxiety in Just as Long … but Here’s to You… shows the Robinson family and all of its happiness and unhappiness. Even though this book was written in the 1990s, the message of a seemingly perfect person like Rachel struggling behind the scenes and Tolstoy’s quote seems just as relevant as ever. 

While I was in no way a “child prodigy” as Charles consistently calls his sister Rachel, I have always done very well in school and my grades in junior high were all A’s. School has never seemed hard and the predictable rhythm and routine of school always made me feel safe. But junior high, mine in particular, didn’t always feel safe with some teachers who seemed like they had long ago checked out, constant fights and drama (which I safely observed from a distance) and dealing with my own roller coaster of emotions and hormones that I didn’t quite understand. The only safe place seemed like math with its challenging work, teachers who always seemed to have control of the classroom, and the logical progression through the math book: Lesson 1.1, homework, Lesson 1.2, homework, mid-chapter quiz, chapter test. Repeat.

I don’t know if behind the good grades, much like Rachel, anyone sensed my anxiety. I usually escaped into those Danielle Steel novels whose heroines escaped their anxieties and tragedies to find true love and wear Chanel and diamonds, worlds I knew nothing about, but worlds where everything turned out okay in the end. 

When Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson ends, we aren’t totally sure that everything will be okay. Rachel’s family is going to therapy but there is no promise that life will get easier between her mother’s new job, Charles continuing to struggle (and probably attending the local high school in the fall), and a possible unresolved romance with the famous Jeremy Dragon. I also predict that Allison’s crush on Charles, if ever requited, could possibly cause some conflict for the ever-delicate friendship balance between Allison, Stephanie and Rachel (See? We need that Allison novel). But the fact that family and growing up issues don’t always resolve themselves in 50,000 words is real. I always appreciate that about your novels and the characters in them: the problems and issues aren’t always resolved on the last page. There’s not always a lesson learned. Everyone doesn’t always get what they want. Maybe the lesson or what the person wants will come years after the last page. Maybe it will never come. And that’s how life is. 

Even 30 years after middle school, probably a little like the fictional adult Rachel Robinson, I’m still figuring things out. In the social media, constant notification era of the 2020s, probably a lot of other people in this era are too. I’m not escaping into Danielle Steele novels anymore, but it’s easy to escape into doom scrolling, or even better, escaping with old familiar characters like Rachel, Stephanie and Allison, remembering a time where maybe there weren’t always answers but the quest to find those answers felt a little easier. Maybe that’s why I’ve kept that copy of Just As Long … all these years.

So thank you for these characters, like Rachel, who even with a glimpse into their flaws, make us feel safe and that we are not alone in our struggles. And even if the next chapter is written, everything will be okay.