Tuesday, November 04, 2014

We are going to Mexico in January, and I had to renew my passport in order to be ready. The new one came this week, all stiff and empty, and I am feeling pangs about the old one--the way it always flipped open to my Chinese visa, prompting an exasperated sign from the immigration agent who would have to wrestle it to a new page. All of the airplane stamps in it, crooked, hastily applied at unforgiving times in unfamiliar airports. I haven't been so many places, but a lot of them were there in that passport, which is now...recycled, I guess. Where do all the old passports go? It's better if I don't know.

Mexico seems like a reasonable place to start the next 10 years of adventures, someplace I hadn't really thought about visiting until suddenly it revealed itself to be exactly the place to go. One of my goals in life is a swim up bar, so we're going to cross that off, and we'll snorkel around some sculptures that are being claimed by the sea. (A side effect of living with a sculptor is that I think about sculptures more than ever before.) There's the obvious benefit of leaving rainy old Seattle in January for the beach, although rainy old Seattle is pretty charming when it's all hunkered down behind steamy windows and misting gently in the 5:00 streetlights.

Right now my new passport smells like new passport, but I suppose it's only a matter of time until it is creased and falling open naturally to something new, some place I'm not sure of yet. Part of the history of me becoming this girl was kept in that old passport, so it can't be anything less than interesting to see who comes out of the new one.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

Do not fret! They will mail your old passport back to you, with a single hole punch through the front. The artifact will be yours to keep.

samantha said...

You are right, it came back today! I am a little disappointed that the state department doesn't have its own stamp.