In the piece, “Goodbye, American Dream”, Lauren Wagner describes how life was like right before a divorce and how she longs for that again; “I had two parents that loved each other, a sister who was cute as a button, and two dogs that ran around happily.  They call that a nuclear family… Now that I look back, on my life it could have been a dream.”
I really enjoyed how the author wrote this piece.  It was all so simple yet pleasant; Wagner used ideas like tone and flashback. You could see the moments that she refers to in your head as if it were a scene from a movie.  Through her tone, she expresses how nostalgia and how dear she holds onto those simple, yet dear memories.  "... Now I that I have about a hundred converted to VHS-to-CD discs.. I see all of these memories and feel sad that I didn't realize how idyllic my childhood was before it was gone for good."  And how she'll value those memories forever but thinks she can't create more like that.
One thing I wish that I could tell the author, Lauren Wagner is that divorce isn't the worst thing in the world, it's pretty ignorant coming from a person who has both parents still. But, I think that I'd rather see both my parents’ happy separate, than to witness arguments.