Vo. 24, No. 8

Never before has a TSA line seemed to move so quickly.

Even without PreCheck, Sophie made her way through the security queue outside Terminal D of Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport¹ with uncommon ease on Wednesday morning.

Perhaps it only seemed to move so fast because I was not actually standing in it. The more likely explanation is that I knew I was standing in Sophie’s physical presence for the final time, in all likelihood, until early 2023.

• 

• 

Having finished her nine weeks of missionary and Russian language training at home (mostly), we drove Sophie to the airport early Wednesday morning so she could board a flight to…Spokane, Washington. I don’t imagine she will encounter a whole lot of Russian speakers there, but that’s where she will serve while she awaits her Ukrainian visa. It sounds like visas for about half the missionaries in her MTC district came through in time. The rest of them, including Sophie, have received temporary domestic assignments while they wait.

I am not good at predicting the future, but it would surprise me if Sophie has to wait more than a couple of months there. But however long it turns out to be, I don’t think she could have asked for a better temporary assignment. The Washington Spokane Mission² contains Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after all, one of the most beautiful places there is. Coeur d’Alene is also Crystal’s hometown and current home to Sophie’s Kent grandparents, her Aunt Marci, Uncle Roland, cousin Kaisa, Aunt Darcy, and probably other relatives I’m failing to mention. Grandpa Kent, who (along with Grandma) paid us a short visit earlier this month, texted something about having to turn his watch back 15 years when boarding the flight home. This, of course, is a gross exaggeration (it can’t be more than 10 years) and I think all of us were quietly hoping that Sophie would be assigned somewhere near Coeur d’Alene.

But the Spokane Mission covers 12 stakes, six in North Idaho (which is uniformly beautiful) and six in Eastern Washington (which, it might surprise you to learn, is less so). And so we knew the odds of Sophie’s getting assigned to the one stake in which almost all of the aforementioned people live³ were stacked against her.

Finding out where Sophie wound up after having to leave her at the airport with no cell phone–something no 21st Century parent should ever have to endure–took longer than I would have liked (and far longer than it needed to). The form letter Sophie’s mission president emailed us two days after her arrival was (as communications from church leaders sometimes are) longer on optimistic platitudes and expressions of love⁴ than on useful information (e.g., what state Sophie was in). The letter mentioned that Sophie would inform us of her address “on their first P-day,” but did not specify when that would be. As I type this paragraph on Sunday afternoon, I still don’t know.

Crystal ascertained at some point via Facebook that Sophie had been assigned to Pullman, Washington. I’m sure she is enjoying the work there and look forward to hearing about it on her next P-day, whenever that is. I am familiar with Pullman (which is to say I have heard it) only because it is home to Washington State University, and I only know that because WSU plays in a big-time athletic conference.⁵ Many years ago, Crystal’s sister Carrie (now Doctor Carrie) was going to school at some university in Portland (I think–I don’t remember for sure) that I was not familiar with.

When I told her I had never heard of that university, she rolled her eyes and replied, “That’s because you only know about schools with football teams.”

Technically, it would have been more accurate to say that I don’t know any schools west of the Mississippi except those with football teams, but there was no denying her point.

Speaking of schools without a football team, Crystal is now enrolled in a masters program at Johns Hopkins University.⁶ Her first class is Tuesday and she’s pursing a degree in special education. Jen (Grant’s wife) is in a different cohort of the same program so presumably they’ll be comparing notes. And best of all, the State of Maryland is allegedly picking up 75 percent of the tuition. All Crystal has to do is commit to teach anywhere in Maryland for a few years after graduation, which is what she wants to do anyway, and so we’re calling that a win!

Crystal was already the busiest person in the house before enrolling in graduate school. Now with night classes on top of her full-time job para-educating at Ridgeview Middle School and her unending work as our stake’s communication director, we’re eating a lot more pizza than we used to. I’m happy with that.

August has probably been our most eventful month since, well, last August.

Having Sophie in home MTC complicated matters a little but she wound up being able to come along with us most places. This sometimes meant attending classes from the back of the car or other unconventional locations, but she made it work. We did not think it would be a good idea to take Sophie to Ocean City with us early in the month, and so she got to attend the MTC from grandma and grandpa’s house (alongside her cousin, Alex) which seemed to make everybody happy.

On the way home from Ocean City, we paid our first ever visit to the charming town of Berlin, Maryland (pop. 5,000). Turns out it’s a lovely little place that we’ve probably driven past 700 times going to and from the beach. And we would have driven past it again this time had Lucy not learned recently that Berlin has a mermaid museum.

Their preference for gender-neutral pronouns notwithstanding, Lucy identifies unambiguously as a mermaid. And so upon discovering the existence of this museum, it quickly became imperative that we go. I’m not sure how to describe it other than to say it has everything you might expect to find in a museum dedicated to beings who do not actually exist. If you’d like to go, it’ll cost you $10, which is roughly commensurate with the entertainment value of the place. Here are some pictures.

Less than a week after the unparalleled excitement of Ocean City and the Berlin Mermaid Museum, Grace and Crystal joined up with Ilse and Emily Eskelsen for four action-packed days in New York City (where, it embarrasses me to admit, Grace had never been). Lucy stayed home to work, Sophie had home MTC, and I was not invited. The girls give every indication of having had a good time.

I don’t know everything that they did — maybe they’ll write their own letters, or it’s probably on the Facebook — but the pictures suggest they went all in on what I might call the “Gilmore Girls package” — museums, bookstores, junk food, and not a single sporting event. If Jon Eskelsen (who apparently was not invited either) and I had planned our own New York trip on the same days the girls were there, there is a zero percent chance our paths would have crossed at any point. But I’m glad they had a good time.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The girls drove home from New York on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, loaded the car and spent most of the afternoon driving to Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia. I told work colleagues that I was going to a family reunion even though Mom made it clear that it was not an official family reunion because Matt and Andra’s family was not able to come.

Fair enough. At this non-family-reunion event, 22 close relatives shared two reasonably sized cottages from Sunday night to Thursday morning. And because Matt’s family was absent (along with Abby, Hannah and JT) we did not have to sit for a massive family picture, which is always torture. I had a nice time.

Dad, now in his 80th year, and Mom, who turns 75 this week, have largely retired from planning these biennial gatherings. (Now they just bankroll them, for which we are grateful.) But Dad is still a planner by nature. Do you remember the Robert De Niro character in Meet the Parents — the guy who distributes printed itineraries detailing the precise timing of the weekend’s activities to everyone in the wedding party? That’s basically a caricature of Dad.⁷ And so notwithstanding his having officially passed the planning responsibilities down to my generation, I imagine the looseness we built into the week’s activities probably irked him a little (though he did not show it).

But even if we had managed to schedule every activity down to the minute and synchronize watches, we still would have been at the mercy of the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred, which brought several hours of heavy downpours every day we were there.

We managed to have fun during the brief periods when the sun poked through and even during the longer periods when it didn’t. It’s been ten years since we all went to Oglebay together. We stopped going when it felt like most of the cousins had outgrown most of the activities. But a decade later, some of the older kids were feeling nostalgic for it and the youngest kids had no memory of it. And so we went back. Sophie and Alex were miraculously able to attend all of their MTC classes despite the less-than-awesome wifi. Here are some pictures:

• 

• 

Grant and Andrew took advantage of the inclement weather to do actual work for their jobs. Lacking their dedication, but not wanting to look like a slacker in comparison, I would occasionally pull out my laptop and try to look busy while working the crossword puzzle. My consecutive-days streak for completing the New York Times crossword (a streak that began about three weeks after everything shut down last year) went over 500 this month. The streak, which now stands at 513 days, has become a matter of some pride for me even though I’m never going to catch Grace’s Duolingo streak, which is now 583 days.

Whatever pride I may feel for my crossword prowess is more than offset by the humiliation of not being able to run. I continue to be hobbled by a nagging right calf injury that I keep thinking is better but that I’m obviously not giving enough rest to heal. I made the mistake of testing it at last weekend’s Montgomery County Road Runners Club’s “Eastern County 8K,” one of the club’s only “downcounty” races.⁸ The announcer asked how many of us at the start line lived east of Georgia Avenue. Maybe three hands went up in addition to mine. We probably had better representation than that. Obviously, not everyone pays attention to announcers or participates in show-of-hands polls. I’d also guess that the average person honestly couldn’t tell you whether they live east of Georgia Ave. without giving the matter some thought. But I’m still pretty sure we locals were greatly outnumbered by our upcounty compatriots.

Anyway, I lined up at the very back of the pack and took it out really slowly (slow even for me). The calf felt okay for the first half of the race but eventually gave out and I had to shuffle/limp through the last 4 km. I finished dead last in my age group, more than 12 minutes behind the next slowest guy my age. I crossed the finish line with some folks who appeared to be in their 60s and 70s with various types of irregular gaits obviously caused by any number of physical limitations incident to age. As I hobbled alongside them, it occurred to me that these are the people I want to be when I grow up. People who can’t do it like they used to but still turn up to race.

But I am not ready to grow up just yet and, to this end, have decided to try and take 4 to 6 weeks off of running entirely in the hope that this will give my leg time to heal itself properly. If that doesn’t work, I guess it’ll be back to the doctor. Meanwhile, I should probably talk to the psychiatrist about upping my Wellbutrin dosage because, without running, these next several weeks are liable to be depressing.

But life is still good and we are excited by what’s ahead. Hope you feel similarly.

Love,

Tim

1. At least 99.999 percent of people refer to this airport as “BWI” but I have just now decided to begin referring to it as “Marshall.” It requires two fewer syllables and if we’re going to refer to Washington’s two other major airports by the people they’re named for (Reagan and Dulles), then we ought to do the same for Marshall. This will undoubtedly result in some confusion, but as someone who routinely describes distances in kilometers even when speaking with other Americans, I am obviously one willing to trade clarity for pretentiousness. Incidentally, if you are one of my children and do not know who (your fellow native Marylander) Thurgood Marshall is, then I have failed you as a parent and I apologize for that. You should stop reading this letter now and Google him.
2. I’ve been a member of the Church my whole life and still don’t know why the city comes last in mission names, but that’s how we roll.
3. Sophie’s grandparents live in the Dalton Gardens Ward and her aunt and uncle live in the Hayden Lake 1st Ward. Both are in the Hayden Lake Idaho Stake.
4. In any other context, an email from a 47-year-old man I’ve never met professing “deep love” for my 19-year-old daughter would concern me. I was reassured by the knowledge that a couple dozen other parents were receiving the same letter and that claiming to love people we don’t actually know is fairly de rigueur at church.
5. The Pac-12 is not what it used to be, but I’m old enough to remember when it was.
6. Hopkins technically has a football team. They play in Division III, which is why you’ve never heard of them. But their lacrosse team is a perennial national power. They also have a world-renowned medical school, which is the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people at the mention of Johns Hopkins (well, that or the lacrosse team) but they’re strong in lot of other stuff, too. (They’re tied with Caltech for ninth in the U.S. News rankings, behind five Ivies, MIT, Stanford and Chicago — i.e., other schools with mostly mediocre/non-existent football teams).
7. For our family’s first trip to Disney World 34 years ago, I was tasked with outlining the itinerary — not just which park we would visit each day (there were just two parks in those days, Magic Kingdom and Epcot) but the precise sequence in which we would hit each ride/attraction. I seem to have inherited some of these tendencies, but to a considerably lesser degree.
8. “Downcounty” is how the rest of the county euphemistically refers to the less-affluent, southeastern corner of the county (where we live). I usually have to travel “upcounty” to participate in club races, and so I wanted to support this one even if it meant potentially aggravating a nagging injury.