Passed Ports

I just opened up a Flat Rate Mailing Envelope from the US Government.

My new passport has arrived.

My old passport arrived to my college PO box. Box# 672. I was a couple months into 19. I was looking forward to going oversees for the first time to perform a children’s musical in Poland that summer. I opened the cover. The picture was ok. I was blonde with aqua colored contacts. I was probably wearing silver eye shadow. I was definitely wearing overalls. I wore no jewelry. My smile showed teeth.

I flipped the empty pages. I imagined where my stamp for Poland would go. I counted how many blank pages I had to fill before I’d have to get a new one. 20. I could visit 20 countries. I checked the expiration date. May 31, 2010. I could visit 20 countries in 10 years. 10 years. How ridiculously far away was 10 years?! I’d be well past graduated (hopefully! If I ever chose a major!), who knows where I’d be living… Maybe I’d be married? Yikes. (Hyperventilating.) I’m 19! I’ll cross the marriage bridge when I have to. What countries will fill the blank pages after Poland? What memories will those stamps conjure when I leaf through my passport in 10 years? Where was I going? Who would I be after I went?

2010 has come. I filled my first passport with stamps from Poland, England, Holland, Belarus, Turkey, Greece…A million memories would flood back from a glance at those stamps. Memories of getting my nose pierced in Athens by a man who had a framed picture of Jackie O, hugging a homeless woman in Minsk after I gave her my change…her face was so cold, coughing after communion in Warsaw because I didn’t realize it wasn’t grape juice, a Greek baker who sang to me everything he had to say for 20 minutes, a Turkish woman who lowered a basket to the street to be filled with bread, having my face covered in a rain of kisses by the children of a small polish town, missing every possible flight that I’d bought to England, Italy, and Paris and then calling home crying on a pay phone, a man telling me I was beautiful on a ferry and that I “must take this” and then handing me bubblegum with pictures of racecars inside, Crying with Bassia when we said goodbye knowing we’d never see each other again and we couldn’t say all we wanted to in each other’s language, Impersonating a monster for 2 weeks and then finding out that the girl had been saying “how are you” in Russian everyday…not “Godzilla”, Walking out of “My Fair Lady” in London and seeing a barefoot man with a sign saying his shoes had been stolen, dancing all the grass off the lawn at a Scheshlick (sp?), doing the robot with a man wearing a Buddha mask and then finding out we were being filmed for a Japanese Comedian’s Comedy show.

I didn’t fill all 20 pages, but the stamps I received are fuller than the pages they occupy.

It was sad to mail it in for its replacement. I’m a nostalgic soul that loves to page through memories before folding them up gently and placing them reverently back into the corners of my mind.

And, now, my new passport has arrived. It’s a different color. The picture inside is ok. It is of a redhead with grey eyes. I’m wearing a dress and makeup and dangling earrings. My smile shows teeth.

There is no trip being planned. I just want to be prepared. There are 20 new pages to be filled. Stamped. Remembered. 20 pages filled with artistic renderings of American scenes accompanied by quotes by great Americans that seem to be trying to emblazon in me that I’m “free to visit other countries but that America is still the best country to come home to”. It expires on July 30, 2020. 2020! How ridiculously far away is 2020?! What woman will mail this passport in when she seeks her next replacement? What hair color? What life stage?

I’m not sure I know anymore at 29 than I did at 19 what journeys are in store…

…but I’m ready.

I’ve got my passport.