Dear Tate, Vol. 1 👀

in which we all need fresh eyes

Two days ago we dropped off our oldest, Tate, at the airport for her college semester abroad in Austria. Even though she normally attends university already a thousand miles away from us, I'm still going to miss her like crazy (we talk all the time). I pitched to her the idea of us writing letters to each other, back and forth,

Spencer Klavan

and

Andrew Klavan

style a la

THE NEW JERUSALEM

(but probably with less philosophy), and she was all on board. …Obviously we're not going to get too terribly personal in public here, but we still thought the endeavor would be fun.

Here's my first letter to her. She'll respond in kind next week.

///

Vienna, by Andrew Voy #

Dear Tate,

So here you are, once again, in Europe. That sounds so bougie at first blush, as you and I have already talked about — oh, here you are again, where we as a family summer (it’s never a good sign when ‘summer’ becomes a verb); not too far from where you lived in your early childhood years. Don’t be that guy. You’re there with peers, some of whom have never left their home country, which means the cross-cultural adjustment for them will be sharper than it will be for you. Theirs will be a right angle; yours will be more of a curve.