Passports and Pettiness
It’s time for me to renew the twins’ passports again, and after an hour of navigating the various forms, photocopies, and proofs of identification, my brain is feeling a little mushy. Even more complicated was finagling an appointment at one of the dozen local passport processing facilities. I’m not saying it was harder than getting Taylor Swift tickets, but I definitely had to set an alarm to snag one.
On the application, they ask for your international travel plans. As of now, the twins don’t have any, so I feel a little odd being so aggressive about getting this renewal. But something about the pandemic and the feeling of being trapped has intensified my wanderlust. For a lot of us out here on the west coast, we were far, far away from family, with no way to easily drive to get to them. More than once, I looked at google maps, at the 2,500+ mile journey, wondering if there was some way we could manage it with three kids and two dogs. People do, I suppose.
We didn’t. We stayed put and made the best of it all and flew with ridiculous precautions and now, I don’t want something as small as a passport to stand between us and the freedom that I used to take for granted. I sometimes think about the little changes we’ve all made that will stick with us forever. In 50 years, my kids’ grandkids will laugh about their crazy grandma who keeps some masks and extra toilet paper on hand, just in case.
I am so sick of talking and thinking about Covid, but it’s still there, in the back of all of our minds, and being sick of something doesn’t mean that it’s not affecting me anymore. We got a letter from the girls’ school district last week because they’ve both missed 7 days of school this year, 5 of them because of our family’s travels. It was the usual reprimand letter, “remember how important attendance is, etc.” and my first thought was how the district had no problem forcing me to give up my time to do e-learning for a year, so maybe a week off for a trip isn’t that big a deal in the scheme of things. I don’t like that bitterness. But I also didn’t like being seen as expendable, as someone who would pick up the slack when our society decided to shut down.
I suspect I’m not alone. There are a lot of us who just want to move on, but who have to reckon with new realizations over the past few years. I feel like we’re cleaning out the fridge, opening up the tupperware containers, and discovering all sorts of rot. Unequal divisions of labor, check. Disregard for the health of our poorest workers, check. Societal unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good, check.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not hearkening back to a golden age. I’m enough of a student of history to know that there was no one perfect time in our history where everyone came together and created a new and beautiful world. People are people. We’re all driven by a thousand motivations, both petty and pure. And the goal is to find the beauty in the good and the strength in the bad.
Still, there lies within me the desire, sometimes, to just escape it all. To go to a new place, with problems that are not our problems, with debates that are not our debates, and to do nothing more than let the difficulties at home settle for awhile. And hopefully, come back refreshed and renewed to set aside my pettiness and get back to the hard work of building a society that, if not beautiful, is at least a little more honest and true than it used to be.
