At some point, either while I was packing for my December trip to California, or during my train ride there, or while I was there, I either misplaced or lost my passport. And it\u2019s been driving me nuts this whole time, not even being able to remember if I actually Did pack it, or when it went missing during the trip. It\u2019s like a black hole in my memory. If you\u2019ve ever experienced anything like it you know how disturbing it is.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been mostly assuming it was stolen out of my luggage while traveling, but something that argues against that is it would have been in the same luggage pocket where I also had $200 in cash for miscellaneous trip expenses, and all that money, less what I spent, made it to California. I just can\u2019t remember if the passport did or not, or was even in my luggage at that time. I remember unpacking when I got to my brother\u2019s house, but I don\u2019t remember if I saw or did anything with the passport. What I do remember is when I packed for my return home I looked for the passport, could not find it anywhere, and assumed I must have left it at home. But when I got back home I checked the safe for it and it wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
I looked everywhere in the house for it after that, and began to panic when I could not find it, and worse, could not remember what I did with it while packing for the trip, or during the trip, or after the trip. I remembered taking it out of the safe while considering whether to take it with me because of all the ICE activity happening just then, and thinking I might need it for identification. But I kept drawing a complete blank as to whether or not I actually packed it along. It was maddening because I know I would have been careful about what I did with it it and yet I could remember nothing about what I did with it.<\/p>\n
For weeks after returning from California, right up until last Wednesday while I was packing to go visit a friend in Sunbury Pennsylvania, I kept revisiting all the places in my house that I searched, hoping to find it in some nook or cranny I\u2019d overlooked, or that it would just magically appear right before my eyes somewhere I\u2019d looked before and hadn\u2019t seen it. I checked every piece of luggage I own for the umpteenth time. I checked my briefcases. I checked all my backpacks, including the ones I plan to give away because I don\u2019t use those anymore. I checked the other safes in the house. I checked my file cabinets. I checked every drawer in the house. Oh\u2026and under the bed.<\/p>\n
I asked my brother to double check my bedroom there in his house and he could not find it anywhere I suggested it might be. Which must mean it was stolen on the way out to California. But not the cash too? Nothing made sense, and I could remember nothing.<\/p>\n
Since my Parkinson\u2019s diagnosis, which I got finally some months after the December trip, I\u2019ve been wondering if the Parkinson\u2019s brain fog hasn\u2019t played a part in all this.<\/p>\n
So I felt that I had to tell the Feds that I\u2019d either lost my passport, or it was stolen, and get a replacement. I didn\u2019t want my passport being used for crime, so the Feds needed to know I didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n
Reporting it lost or stolen was easy-ish. I got online and filled out a form. But where it asked if it was stolen or lost I had to say I could not say. Maybe it was lost somewhere or maybe someone stole it while I was on the train, or while my luggage was in the luggage room in the first class lounge in Chicago. Those Amtrak bedrooms don\u2019t lock on the outside, and anyone could have got in and rummaged though my luggage, which I hadn\u2019t locked because I was carrying it with me. A mistake I won\u2019t make again. The form asked when the passport was issued and I did not know because I only copied down its number not its issue or expiration date. Another mistake I won\u2019t make again. I made an awkward guess as to the issue date.<\/p>\n
I discovered I could not simply ask for a replacement passport, I had to apply for a new one. So I downloaded the application for a new passport form. I would need to submit it with a birth certificate. And so I came to another difficulty: I\u2019d lost one of my birth certificates too. And once again it was a situation where I could not remember what happened to it, and looking everywhere in the house for it and not finding it.<\/p>\n
I think the last time I had it in my hands was when I went to the Maryland DMV to get the Real ID thing on my driver\u2019s license. I might have left it there. But I don\u2019t know. I would have taken a folder of identification things with me, including the passport, and like when I applied for TSA Precheck the person behind the desk just glommed right onto my passport and ignored everything else. Which convinced me that a passport is the gold standard for ID.<\/p>\n
Luckily I had two copies of my birth certificate. For some reason mom had ordered two copies and I inherited the second one after she passed away. But the second one, identical to the first one, did not have the notary seal on it, but on a separate California document stapled to it with the notary\u2019s signature. I wasn\u2019t sure that one would be accepted, but I went to the post office with it anyway and the application for a new passport I\u2019d downloaded when I submitted the lost or stolen document.<\/p>\n
The lady at the post office looked that other birth certificate over and didn\u2019t throw it back at me so I felt a little relieved. She took another passport photo of me, bundled everything together and I paid the usual, not the expedited service fee, since I mostly wanted it for whenever I needed that gold standard ID, and maybe some possible trips outside the country when I retired a second time.<\/p>\n
A couple days later I got an email saying my passport application was being processed and it might take six to eight weeks to arrive. I felt a wave of relief. It was short lived. About a week later I got a letter from the State Department telling me my application was put on hold and I needed to submit a birth certificate and, confusingly, the lost or stolen passport form that I\u2019d submitted digitally on the website.<\/p>\n
I found myself thinking the digital submission didn\u2019t take for some reason. But the request for a birth certificate was more troubling. The one I submitted was identical to the one that got me my first passport, but it didn\u2019t have the notary seal directly on it, but was stapled to it on an official document with the notary\u2019s signature. I figured that was that sticking point.<\/p>\n
So I looked up what the State Department regarded as a legitimate birth certificate and neither of mine looked anything like the sample on their website. They were both official documents from either the State of California or the hospital I was born at, a \u201cCertificate of Live Birth\u201d (that phrase always creeped me out a bit). But apparently they did not meet the standard. My mom\u2019s birth certificate, which I have, looks exactly like the one on the State Department website: a very ornate thing like something you might frame and put on the wall next to your Employee of the Month Performance Award. (Here is my certificate of Live Birth, and here is my Five Years Without A Sick Day Service Award\u2026) Until I looked it up I had no idea birth certificates were so\u2026official looking. Mine looked something like a W-2.<\/p>\n
I had a co-worker who was born at the same hospital I was (small world). He retired but I saw him one afternoon in the Institute cafeteria and asked him if he knew how hard it was to get another copy of a birth certificate from that hospital. He told me the hospital was closed some time ago. It was considered a California heritage site but the building had a fire that destroyed a lot of the interior. Our physical records he said, might have been lost.<\/p>\n
I began to despair. I stalled for weeks about going to the California website and at least seeing what I might have to do to get a new copy of my birth certificate. I checked a few places. One thing I saw was if I had a passport that would make the process easy. Swell. I considered waiting until I could get out there with whatever documentation I had, Real ID driver\u2019s license, past tax forms, mortgage statements, the old passport with holes in it, anything that might help, and throw myself on the mercy of the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
It was getting scary. In this day and age of Trump\/ICE if I\u2019m asked suddenly to prove I\u2019m a citizen, how do I do it without either a passport or birth certificate? That fear was why I\u2019d thought to take the passport with me to California last December in the first place.<\/p>\n
This whole thing was severely stressing me out for weeks. Not just that the only ID I had now was my Real ID driver\u2019s license, which I kept hearing was not good enough for Trump\u2019s goons, but also that I could NOT<\/em>\u00a0remember what had happened to either my passport or that birth certificate that got me the first passport. And now I didn\u2019t even have the other one because it had been sent to the State Department which it seemed didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n Every time I began gnawing at it I would stress myself into a state of despair. It was the perfect storm of executive disfunction: having an array of paths to take, none of which I liked. All I did was stress every time I tried to think my way out of it.<\/p>\n So I just sat on it for weeks.<\/p>\n Last Wednesday I began packing for a trip to Sunbury Pennsylvania to visit a friend, Peterson Toscano, and maybe get my photographic eye opened again because Sunbury always gives my cameras something to love, and I desperately needed to feel that fire in me again after what Parkinson\u2019s has been doing to my mind. While I packed, I took yet another opportunity to visit every place in the house I thought my passport might be. Again. And once again I could not find it. It was becoming a routine.<\/p>\n When I came back home yesterday I saw I\u2019d received a priority mail envelope from U.S., Government Official Mail<\/em>\u00a0with a tracking bar code on it. As soon as I picked it up I could feel something like a passport inside of it. I bolted for the kitchen table and opened it up. There Was a passport inside of it.<\/p>\n I was so overjoyed you can\u2019t imagine! All these weeks of stressing over it suddenly over. The wave of absolute relief practically swept me up off my feet. And then, more confusion.<\/p>\n My first thought was this was my lost passport and someone found it, sent it to the Feds and they\u2019re sending it back to me. But no\u2026checking it more carefully I could see it was a replacement, in fact it says on the first page that it is a replacement for a lost passport. It had been issued only a few days previously, and it arrived within the six to eight week timeframe they originally said a replacement would arrive in. But why then did I get that letter telling me my application was on hold until I got the correct documentation submitted?<\/p>\n I have no idea what was going on. None. Maybe my stalling over it for weeks had left it in someone\u2019s inbox and a supervisor took another look at it and decided my old California birth certificate was good enough and yes I\u2019d submitted the lost\/stolen form digitally and that was good enough. Maybe my passport Had been stolen and some crook tried to use it and got caught and my passport confiscated and sent back to the State Department, which caused somebody to look and see if I\u2019d reported it lost or stolen, and that broke the logjam on my application. I have no idea but I am So<\/em> glad, So relieved, that I have a passport again and I\u2019m not without that gold standard of identification anymore.<\/p>\n These days being without ID is risky. I keep thinking of this from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long<\/em> by Robert Heinlein:<\/p>\n “When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.”<\/p>\n Heinlein seems to have thought of himself as a \u201crational anarchist\u201d. The older I get, the more I have to live in Donald Trump\u2019s America, the more I find myself moving toward Heinlein. But I’m not there yet.<\/p>\n And this is the here and now, and my passport is Not<\/em> leaving that safe again unless I am travelling with it or going somewhere to have some sort of ID background check done (like another Goddard badge, which isn\u2019t likely now since I’m about to be retired again after Roman launches) and if that\u2019s the case it is going in one of those around the neck passport wallets and Not Leaving My Body until I can get it back into the safe!<\/p>\n Hopefully they send me back the birth certificate I submitted my application with. But I am going to try and get another good one from California. Having the passport now might make it easier. If my original documentation didn\u2019t go up in flames when my birth hospital burned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At some point, either while I was packing for my December trip to California, or during my train ride there, or while I was there, I either misplaced or lost my passport. And it\u2019s been driving me nuts this whole time, not even being able to remember if I actually Did pack it, or when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[157,362],"class_list":["post-14358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-the-old-man-chronicles","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14362,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions\/14362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}