We went to Istanbul to celebrate birthdays, but also, if I’m honest, to acknowledge the passing of forty-five and fifty years together. My daughters are grown now—fully formed women with opinions, confidence, and lives that stretch far beyond me. We have traveled together as adults, but this felt different to me. There was no real itinerary built in for this trip. We walked side by side, equals in our curiosity and companions in discovery.
Istanbul is an incredible place but it asks a lot of you. It is busy, beautiful, and unapologetically alive. Streets spill into each other. Sounds overlap. History presses in from every direction. We were moving quickly, caught up in it, trying to take it all in—mosques rising above us, water flashing in the distance, people everywhere doing the simple, holy work of living their lives.
And then something in me said, stop.
So I did.
I stopped walking. I closed my eyes.
I wanted to know the city without my camera, my feet, or my mind racing ahead to the next thing. I wanted to breathe it in—to let it come to me.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Istanbul has a scent that feels both ancient and present. There was the briny air from the Bosphorus and the unmistakable presence of fishermen’s nets, salt, and the day’s catch still alive with possibility. Then the warmth of chestnuts roasting nearby, smoky and slightly sweet, reminding me that some comforts are universal no matter where you are in the world.
Coffee followed—dark and intense, the kind that insists you slow down and pay attention. Tea, too, softer, steadier, brewing patiently in glass cups that seemed to appear in every hand. It all layered together in a way that felt almost orchestral, each scent adding its own note to the whole.
And the sounds—oh, the sounds. The city was talking. Voices rose and fell in a language I didn’t understand but somehow felt. Vendors calling out, footsteps on stone, cups clinking, laughter slipping between conversations. Life was happening everywhere, all at once, and no one was asking permission.
For a moment, I felt completely still inside it.
When I opened my eyes, my daughters had turned back toward me. They were smiling, waiting—not impatient, not worried. Just present. In that instant, I saw them not as the little girls I once shepherded through life, but as the women they have become. Capable. Curious. Fully themselves.
We were celebrating their birthdays, but I realized then that we were celebrating something deeper. This season. This shift. The quiet miracle of arriving here together—not just in Istanbul, but in our relationship. We were no longer mother and children navigating the world in separate roles. We were companions, sharing wonder, making memories that belonged to all of us.
There was a tenderness in that realization. A gratitude so full it almost hurt.
I took one more breath before stepping back into the flow of the street. I wanted to remember it exactly as it was—the smell of chestnuts and coffee, the hum of the city, the feeling of standing still while everything moved around me, my daughters just a few steps away.
I know this moment will come back to me, maybe when the house is quiet, maybe when time feels like it’s moving too fast again. I will remember my time in Istanbul, and how it taught me that sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is stop, close your eyes, and breathe in where you are—especially when the people you love most are walking beside you.
Tom and Nancy’s Journeys 