The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Viewed from room 1238 of the White Swan Hotel, the jagged ten-story tenements of Guangzhou, China, are softened by smog. Below, the United States Consulate complex sprawls beside century-old British colonial structures. “Pretty good view, isn’t it?” asks Paul Stueber, an earnest forty-four-year-old drum instructor from Minneapolis. He packs a baby bottle into a blue backpack. Beside him, his wife, Laurel, a forty-year-old schoolteacher, holds their newly adopted daughter, Olivia Ya Qun Stueber, age approximately fourteen months.

My five-year-old son, Peter, is standing in the middle of the practice rink at Parade Ice Garden in Minneapolis. The other children, coached for this moment by their parents, can push off their skate edges in a wobbly glide. Peter hasn’t made the connection that skating is an entirely different motion from walking. He marches across the ice, arms akimbo, his blades tick, tick, ticking where they should carve and slide.

It’s another spring evening at the Mall of America, where the Glitz store is in full bloom with taffeta and tulle. Pastel Cinderella dresses glimmer under the fluorescent lights, and the skirts bursting from these sleeveless bodices are so lush, they make the satin wedding gown I wore fourteen years ago seem downright drab. I touch the bejeweled outer layer of a particularly lovely dress, and then I see its $298 price tag, which further confirms the dowdiness of my own once-upon-a-time princess costume (now stored dutifully in a cardboard box in the basement, for posterity).