March 24, 2026

The Girl Scouts of America

Dear M.,

If you’re ever in the position of bringing a friend to take their citizenship test at the office park on Gannett Drive in Portland, and while you’re waiting in the visitors’ parking lot and realize how badly you need to pee but that going inside and asking to use the immigration office facilities is not an option, do not try the building across the street, which will be locked and unoccupied despite the many cars lined up around it and the appearance of a reception desk and an ample waiting area just inside the glass doors. Instead, make a left across the dead grass and head 200 yards down the road to the building on the right, which you will be surprised to discover is the Maine headquarters of the Girl Scouts of America. The doors will swing open when you pull. Inside, there will be a woman who calls out a buoyant “Hello!” just as you’re stepping on the heather-grey mat to wipe off the bottom of your boots. You’ll have no problem explaining what you’re doing there and will be pointed with an encouraging gesture a short way down to two open restrooms. Before you go in, you’ll recognize the familiar scent of Thin Mints. “Cookies!” you’ll exclaim, turning your body back toward the room. “Do you make them here?” The woman will say no, but that this is where all the local troops come to pick up their orders. After you return, you’ll pause in the lobby shop and flip through the racks of bright green sweatshirts, consider the faded jean jacket with the famous trefoil insignia on the chest pocket on sale. Maybe a pin or a sticker to thank them for their hospitality. By then you’ll see the office staff shuffling casually in khakis and t-shirts through the bright communal spaces, carrying papers and boxes and sack lunches. You’ll think of your friend across the street, getting grilled about the Constitution and the role of the Executive Branch and the reason we got into all those wars (communism). You’ll think about the 13 stripes on the flag and the 50 stars and the 435 representatives and two- and four- and six-year terms, and what the 10th Amendment is, and what the Cabinet does and what “taxation without representation” refers to and when women were finally allowed to vote and what “We, the people” means in the way it was first intended. You will wish for your friend a speedy test and a kind person administering it. You will want her to not feel as alone as you imagine she feels. So you will do the only thing you can, and ask if you can buy the cookies directly from the Maine headquarters of the Girl Scouts of America, and the woman by the door will say Of course. And while your friend has to answer questions about George Washington and the Federalist Papers and name one of the famous battles of the Civil War, you will place your voluminous order of all the flavors, including the newest addition, a chocolate wafer topped with caramel cream and a hint of sea salt. And when, back at the parking lot at the immigration office, your friend finally emerges from the low-roofed building, and her eyes are heavy with whatever took place inside, and tells you in a soft and sad voice that she passed the test, and falls against your arms in what does not feel like the relief you’d imagined, you will press her against you in the early spring sunshine for a good long time. And when you both get in the car again, you will say—maybe to break the ice, maybe to pretend the test never existed, never needed to exist—“Let’s get out of here”—you will feel a wave of gutsy verve in your bones, as if every member of the Girl Scouts of America is in the back seat cheering you both on, and you will start the car, and turn out of the lot, and you will drive and drive and drive.