Passport

February 15, 2011. I’ve written that date so many times it should have felt more real. It was the date my passport, my first “adult” one after renewing my original youth passport to go to Japan with the Luther College Concert Band after college graduation, would expire. (Interestingly, this meant the date on my passport was synchronized to the year of my ten-year college reunion.)

The date ticked on, ever closer, like a small time bomb. Yet every time I wrote it on an official document, it loomed off in some great distance of time and space and the general unreality of times that would never come.

But in January it finally hit me. This passport is about to expire. My ten years were up.

Last week I received my renewed passport in the mail. It arrived in a thin USPS priority mail envelope, completely unassuming except for the tiny “US Passport Center” return address stamped in the corner. It was shiny and stiff. The picture looks remarkably like the me in the old one. Apparently I am still that person.

But in the excitement of receiving a new license to wander the world, there was a moment of panic and grief. My old passport was not in the envelop. Gone, it seemed, were 10 years of my life as marked by visa stamps to Japan, China, Brazil, Paraguay, Madagascar, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. Stamp dates that told the tale of multiple entries and years spent negotiating customs lines and proving that I was a citizen of the U.S. of A. Suddenly, it seemed as if those years and miles had not happened at all. It was hard to celebrate the arrival of a new passport when the old one suddenly seemed to mean so very little.

Much to my relief, a second envelop, even less assuming than the first, arrived several days later. There, tucked safely inside, was my old passport, officially hole punched, but in every way the well-worn, slightly blurred from being soaked in the Iguazu Waterfall, bloated with extra pages companion it had been for the last ten years.

My new passport bears an even more distant date of February 12, 2021, and has even fewer immediate plans for use than my old passport did when I received it. This passport also comes with a warning that it contains sensitive electronics and I am not to bend, perforate or expose to extreme temperatures. Which makes me wonder if, ten years on, my own sense of adventure is going to become as stiff and sensitive as my new passport. Or if we will both sill wind up bloated with additional pages of visa stamps before our next date of reckoning.

So close to CLOSED

Splitting Hairs

If there is one thing I dislike more than shoe shopping, it is haircuts. Probably the only reason I like them less is because they need to occur on a more regular basis and you don’t really have a chance to try it on before deciding whether you’re going to like it or not.

This also explains why my head of hair has varied in length between six inches and three feet long over the last 15 or so years. While I like it shorter for the efficiency and general agreeability, short requires regular maintenance. And, as my hair grows faster than the average person’s, it requires a lot of maintenance. That means gritting my teeth, walking into a place where a woman is going to force me to sit in a chair, stare a myself in a mirror, ask me questions about how I want to be made to look beautiful (which she will ignore). And then she going to expect me to make small-talk while she proceeds to do things with scissors that I am convinced is going to either leave me bald or looking like I invited a three-year-old to have a go - or both. Then I must pay an exorbitant fee for a result that would have made Picasso proud.

So, long seems like a good way to go. Except that I have an incredibly tiny head (I nearly suffered the humiliation of having to purchase a child’s bike helmet complete with SpongeBob stickers), and my fine, thin hair does not hang gracefully or do anything to balance my proportions. Needless to say, I don’t believe in permanents or other volumizing treatments demanding more money and maintenance.

My usual routine is to rotate through the various stages. I allow my hair to grow out until I get sick of it. I cut it off in frustration and, if I’m in the right place at the right time, I donate it. Then I suffer through the various stages of short until I can just tie it back and ignore it again.

Last week was another final straw. In the panic of minding the Smithsonian exhibit over the last few weeks, my hair had crept to the annoying lengths. Too long to look decent, too short to tie back. No time to do anything about it added to the underlying dislike of haircuts. Finally, on the day the Smithsonian got packed away, I went to do something to control it on its way to longer lengths.

Unfortunately, the stars were aligned exactly against me. My dry hair was full of static and flat, making it appear far worse than even normal. The one girl in the walk-in cuts-for-cheap that had almost become my “regular” stylist wasn’t working. My request for “just a bob, not too short” was promptly ignored leading to a battle of me gently suggesting a modification of the course, and her gaily chatting along and continuing on her path. She was desperate to tease a shape into my hair. My request for a “bob” turned into a sad attempt at a layered, vogue, inverted bob, complete with intensive blowdry and half a can of hairspray.

I’m not an overly demonstrative person, and probably less confrontational than I should be. I gave the results a hesitant benefit of the doubt in hopes that when I went home and washed it, it would be usable.

Not so much. The front hung in my face the annoying way it had before, and the back was short to the point of boy cut. The transition between felt more like the start of an Elizabethan curl-around-the-face do. Or maybe 1920s flapper?

Well, I suffered through a day with it, including a TV interview that broadcast the results to the top quarter of the state and some of the neighboring one. Fortunately I did manage to go and get it “fixed” the following day. Only real damage done was setting back my efforts to grow my hair long enough to tie back by several inches and more months. And it has done little to relieve my apprehensions about going under the scissors in the future.