Hi, hello!

remember me? :)

a snap from a recent trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Hi friends,

I’ve missed you. It’s been a long time—so long that you may have forgotten you were ever subscribed to Caravanserai. Here’s a quick refresher: I’m Sam Childress, and this is a newsletter about travel, culture, and life abroad. I took a break from publishing it while expecting my first child. Now I finally, finally feel ready to come back.

I’ve started writing this update so many times, only to stop, overwhelmed at how much I have to tell you after my time away. I’ll start by getting the bad news over with: in early March, my family was forced to leave our home in Amman, Jordan after the U.S. attacked Iran, setting off a maelstrom of violence. I wrote a detailed essay about that experience for the forthcoming print issue of Consequence, a literary magazine focused on the human cost of violent conflict, and I hope you’ll read it once it’s published (in the meantime, Consequence runs a Substack that I highly recommend checking out).

The short version of the story is that my husband, Nick, happened to be on a work trip in Thailand when the war started, so I was home alone in Amman with our baby (more on him below!) as Iran launched missiles and drones all over the region. I am incredibly grateful that Jordan’s air defenses intercepted everything aimed in our direction…but sheltering in place with an infant while munitions explode in the air above you and fighter jets fly low enough to shake your windows is not an experience I’d wish on anyone, anywhere, ever.

Several days later, during an opening between emergency airspace closures, the baby and I left Jordan and headed to Bangkok to reunite with Nick. We spent a couple weeks in Thailand, then the three of us returned to Washington, D.C., where we’ve been ever since.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this sudden move disrupted every aspect of our lives. For many months, we’ve been living in limbo, hoping to return to Amman once the war ends. The chances of that happening are now basically nil. We are still living out of suitcases that I packed between air raid sirens. We only have a few hours of childcare per week—a fact that is testing the limits of my sanity. But as a semi-nomadic family, rolling with the punches is what we do. We’re making the most of this strange time by spending as much of it as we can with friends and family, frequenting our local library, and hanging out in clean, tree-filled public parks (a privilege we Americans often take for granted).

With all that said, on to the good news!

I gave birth to the sweetest, bravest, most curious little boy last summer. My son has barely been on this planet a year, yet his presence feels so natural that I can hardly believe he was ever not here—it’s as though he had always been waiting in the wings, listening for his queue to enter our lives. Becoming a mother has been the most powerful and demanding thing, and my world has gotten smaller because of it, yet I’m finding so much unanticipated joy in the most trivial moments of parenthood. I can watch my son do nothing but roll around on the floor all day and be absolutely freakin’ enthralled by it. The sight of his doughy hands happily slapping the pages of Goodnight Moon is so uplifting my soul practically leaves my body.

You may recall that I paused this newsletter because my pregnant brain was like a 24-hour news channel that suddenly went off air, broadcasting nothing but white noise. I had no thoughts to commit to paper. But after delivering my son, words came back to me with a vengeance. I wanted to write nonstop. I missed Caravanserai, but a weekly missive was unrealistic amid the sleep deprivation of the newborn phase, and I had an urge to instead sink my teeth into long, meaty projects I could develop at my own pace.

That craving for deep work led me to start my first novel. I’ve also developed a practice of submitting essays to literary magazines, and I hope one day they’ll form a collection. Both are excruciatingly slow, lonely undertakings. I’ve been working on my manuscript since last September, and the finish line still lurks somewhere beyond the horizon. I doubt myself constantly. Yet even on my worst writing days, I would rather fail at this than succeed at anything else. A writing life is fundamentally an exercise in perseverance; it’s a question of whether you can forge ahead in the absence of any indicators that you should. And I believe that I can. (I’ve even set a goal to accumulate ten rejections from editors, and once I do, I’ll give myself a treat as motivation to keep submitting my work. Ha.)

But enough about me. What does this mean for you, dear reader, and for the future of this newsletter?

Over the next few days, I will be refunding all remaining time on paid subscriptions that were paused when I took my sabbatical. I am so, so thankful for your support, and perhaps I’ll re-introduce a paid option someday, but I just can’t commit to providing regular paid content in this messy season of life.

For now, this is going to remain an entirely free publication for my personal reflections on travel, life abroad, and whatever else feels essential. I’ll be popping into your inbox more or less biweekly, starting in the coming days with more about Thailand—I’ll tell you how our first trip with the baby went, share some eye candy, and recommend spots my family loved.

Until then, thank you so much for being here. It’s good to be back.

See you for our next adventure,
Sam