5 Quick Things #425 🧈

nostalgia, wonder, butter, & never forget

We all remember where we were twenty-five years ago (though I think some of you reading this were pretty young and/or not yet born, which is wild)... Kyle and I, just friends at the time, were waiting in the passport line at the Istanbul airport, having taken a quick two-hour flight from Kosovo, where we both currently lived. We both had some vacation time from our stint as missionaries, so we decided to travel together (“just friends”¹) and visit some friends of mine who’d moved to Turkey a few months prior.

As we stood in line, the otherworldly scene in downtown New York unfolded on a TV screen (the old cathode ray tube-style bolted from the ceiling), and we assumed it was some sort of action film. I remarked to Kyle, “Why are they showing a movie in passport control? That’s kinda weird.” An American behind us interjected and said, “You haven’t heard yet, have you... They bombed the twin towers in New York. It’s all over the news.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” one of us said.

“We don’t know yet,” the stranger said.

The two of us got through passport control, then beelined it to a pay phone, where we called our hostel to let them know of our arrival (in this era, they’d sometimes bring around complimentary airport transportation once you gave them a phone call).

“We’ll be right there,” the Turkish gentleman on the phone said, “And we are also so sorry about the news. Come and join us; we are all watching everything on the TV in the lobby. There are plenty of other Americans here, too.” I found this a bit strange. I didn’t yet realize just how monumental the day was.

We quickly checked in, then joined the crowd in the lobby. A couple from downtown Manhattan was frantically trying to reach family members on the hostel lobby phone. We all watched for hours, shocked, but unaware until the days that followed just what a life-changing event had just happened. Kyle and I reached out via email to each of our parents at internet cafés over the next few days, checking in on how they were doing. Everywhere we went, Turkish strangers would tell us how sorry they were for us. American flags flew all over this non-American country. We were asked repeatedly if we knew people personally affected by the disasters. It was all anyone talked about for the two weeks we were there.

…Four-plus months later, the two of us left Kosovo and returned home to a different country, now forever changed, and still affected in ways the younger generation will never know first-hand.

Never forget.

Summer Late (1890), by John Henry Twachtman #

---

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. Hoo boy, do I love and appreciate Katie Marquette’s words about how to free yourself from nostalgia and appreciate the time in which you live, because I could copy + paste much of what she said about her adolescent and young adult years (though in different decades for different life stages, I’m guessing—my Avril Lavigne days were early marriage and parenting). But her point remains, and I completely agree: “I can only tell you that once I stopped demonizing my own time, I could start to love it. I could see that there were good things before and bad things too.”

2. This week I’m back to putting a smidge of butter in my morning coffee a la Elizabeth Bright, and so far I do feel a bit better, cortisol-wise (I’ve been experiencing that oh-so-annoying situation of 3 a.m. wake-ups for no real reason the past few weeks, a key sign I have too much cortisol running through my veins). I’ll report soon whether it helps.

3. I’m around a lot of younger women in my real life, so it’s encouraging when I read words of wisdom from someone like Elizabeth Foss, who’s just a bit ahead of me in the parenting game.² With only two years left of my own homeschooling (how?!), and as someone who gets asked alllllll the time for my secret for The Best Way to Do It™️ (ha!), I really appreciated Elizabeth’s words of encouragement: “I know something now that the woman with all those little children could only know in theory: We do not control the outcome. ...But education isn’t an equation in which the correct inputs guarantee the desired adult at the other end. And frankly, neither is motherhood.”

4. The past few days I’ve had a hankering to travel—not to escape my current life, but simply to enjoy some new-to-me experience. I’ve come to learn that when I get this hankering, it usually means I need to interject some form of wonder into my everyday, I’m-here-at-home-for-now life. …A different route on my neighborhood walk, checking out a shop I’ve passed by for ages but never visited, breaking out a hobby I haven’t done in awhile, even for an hour (hello, watercoloring or paddleboarding). It’s a note to myself to do something a little off my beaten path sometime soon, just because. There’s no need to wait until we’re camping at a national park or wandering a European village to take in the gift of wonder.

5. And finally, if this history lesson on how people lived their everyday lives before the ubiquity of air conditioning doesn’t make you thank your lucky stars for the invention of this delightful technology (see: nostalgia, above), well... perhaps you don’t live in Texas.

---

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📺

Project Hail Mary on Prime³

---

---

Quotable 💬

“Deeper than our wanderlust and desire for adventure is the desire to find our way back home. Ultimately, we want the adventure only so that we can savor it and tell it around the fireplace at home.”

- Ronald Rolheiser

---

Which classic board game would you be willing to play this weekend? 🎲

I liked this reader-submitted question because our family is big on game night, and it reminded me we need to get one on the calendar soon (Reed, we’ll also save one on the calendar for when you’re home next!). I’m with the majority of you: Scrabble and Clue are the GOATs. As for Monopoloy—that’s gonna be a game I’m given in Purgatory. Lord, help me if/when that game ever breaks out in front of me.

• Scrabble: 42.7%

• Clue: 27.8%

• Battleship: 10.1%

• Life: 8.1%

• Monopoly: 7.1%

• Candy Land: 4.2%

Find the next poll question here.

---

Summer 2027: Italy! 🍝🍷

We’re going to one of my all-time favorite places on earth for next summer’s pilgrimage… I’d love to have you come along! Join us:

---

Quick Links 🔗

• 📐 Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

• 🇮🇹 Come to Italy!

---

---

Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What were you doing twenty-five years ago today when you heard the news?

---

Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - Here’s a kayak.

1. Everyone around us could see the writing on the wall. …Sure enough, we started dating about five months later, once we were both back in the States.

2. And who I met awhile back in Sally Clarkson’s living room and who I’ve long admired.

3. I saw it once in the theater and really enjoyed it, but Kyle finally watched it with us this week and we all really enjoyed it again. …The kids say the book is better, and I’ll assume they’re right because isn’t it always?