Last passport

I’m renewing my passport Wednesday. I have a 1pm appointment at my local post office here in rural Louisiana. I’m 78. We know passports are good for 10 years. I figure this will most likely be my last.

Yes, I’m aware that many people these days are living to be in their 90s and even to 100. But if you were a betting person, would you put your money on me getting another passport after this one? I wouldn’t.

They used to let you keep them when you renewed, but in recent decades, no. So I don’t have a record of my last two or three passports, unfortunately. But I still have my passport from fifty+ years ago.

What a lift it is to look at that young man and the record of his globetrotting!

The young man, neatly dressed, slightly long hair combed, natty striped shirt and nearly tight tie, is 26.

He went to a lot of exotic places. Of course, most anyplace he went to would be exotic. He’d never been anywhere. So, Ottawa would have been exotic.

This is just the first page!

But he didn’t go to Ottawa. He went to Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia. He went to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary. He went to Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. To France, England and Scotland. To Holland, Denmark and Norway. And to Spain and Morocco. Each of those countries has a strong, unique taste associated with its name, like a spice.

A passport should look messy and crowded, with words you can’t read.

A passport is that most individualistic of documents. You don’t need to prove anything to obtain one, except that you are who you are. Then it becomes an official scrapbook, a record of traipsing, of whims, of careful planning and scrimping, of astonishments, even of fear and loss. Back then, when they stamped a passport, they used actual stamps that were micro-paintings. When I looked at my passport, I knew I’d been to that country.

These marks are a kind of travel tattoos.

A passport in your hand says: Let’s go! Where? Well, anywhere! You and me, we can do this, we want to do this. We don’t have much money? So what? We’ll make do. We’ll sleep in campgrounds, cheap hotels, hostels. We’ll eat street food. We’ll walk, walk, walk. We’ll travel!

Some people have called me a romantic, as if it were something like having fleas. As if by being a romantic I am a sappy dreamer who wants to turn my back on reality. But some things are romantic! Traveling in faraway lands when you’re young, eating strange food, listening to unheard-of music, meeting people who speak other languages but with the same language of the heart—that is romantic! I stand by that.

Now, here we are fifty years later.

I’m holding my most recent passport.

Look at the lines over my face, like I’m in an aquarium.

See how complex and cautious the document has become. Look at the watermark and the hologram. (There is a barcode on the inside back cover.) It’s so protective, this passport, with all sorts of hidden alarms and shibboleths. “Be careful!” it seems to say. “Do you really have to go there?”

No colorful stamps on this one. Just stamped. Some nightclub stamps on your hand are more vivid.

Well, the good news is that I am getting a new passport. I’m still here. I’m still traveling. I’m still going to get up and go. In April, as a matter of fact. Paris. Can’t wait.

As for the drab passport rubber stamps, I’ll buy postcards. They’re still in color. They’ll do.