5/9-11/11

The kids’ passports were about to expire. I meant to check the dates months ago and somehow had been putting it off. April was about to end. Every day Mom would remind me to get the air tickets ready before the price soared again. I nodded uncertainly, knowing there was much to be done before getting the tickets. Then one day when I finally got the passports out, it was almost May. Feeling the pressure, I quickly found the right forms online, filled and printed two copies, one for each child.

The following Saturday morning, a rare day when J. did not need to leave for work early, we drove to the nearest post office, only to be told that passport service needed appointment by phone. The earliest we could get was one week afterwards, right in the middle of the kids’ STAR tests. We managed to secure an appointment in one afternoon.

Since I am the one who has to take care of all the household needs, to reduce one more task, one morning before the kids dashed out for school, I planted them against a patch of white wall in the hallway and fished out my pocket camera from the large tote I carry nowadays. Before they grabbed their bags and ready to run, I managed to have Mei take a picture of myself. To keep my head at her level, I had to stoop a little in front of the camera. The kids’ pictures came out good but mine was not ideal. I loaded the pictures on the computer, trying to PSP it so the heads would be centered as required.

A few years back I had the pictures taken the same way and printed at Target using the collage option and then cut to size with scissors. I did the same this time, with four pictures for each of us costing less than two dollars. I was proud of my ingenuity. Now I had everything ready for their passport renewal.

On May 9 I left work a bit early and went home to pick up the kids. J was supposed to meet us at the post office. We arrived at 3:30pm ready for our appointment at 3:45pm but there were still people in front of us. Our mailbox was in the same post office so I decide to go through the mail, mostly the flyers from my favorite stores enticing me to visit and spend. The tax refund lied quietly among the pile of mail. Ha, finally, a good excuse to spend more, I said to myself. Truth be told, I have been both a wasteful and frugal shopper. I shopped too often, reluctant to miss any good sales opportunities to stock on items for the sheer aesthetic sensation, the non-practical items that take up too much of the closet space. My frugality derived from the fact that I was unwilling to pay for full price for an item, knowing it would reduce price a couple of weeks later.

I tossed out the flyers for the sake of J, who always has sources to get dirt cheap good stuff at a fraction of cost and who would become unfriendly when I shop too much, complaining about my lack of money sense. But I kept the coupons, unbeknown to J.

Finally around 3:55 the clerk was ready to take us in. She thumbed through our papers and quickly declared that we needed to bring the kids’ birth certificates even for renewal. Strange. The appointment lady specifically said there was no need because it was a renewal. Since the passport office closes at 4:00, there was no time for us to return and came back. On top of that, the pictures did not pass her inspection, with the heads too big and the background space too little.

I requested to see the post master, the same lady who gave us the appointment over the phone. Mary was behind a locked door and we were let in by a post office employee. She was old but pleasant. Opening her appointment book, she showed me the possible dates for the next appointment. I picked an earliest one and left the post office.

In a way I was glad that we could not go home and get the birth certificates the same day, for I had forgotten where I hid the documents. We had a safe but I took out the documents a few months before to digitize everything and decided to hide them elsewhere. A safe would be too obvious a place for important documents. My deposit box in the bank is too small for all the collections J accumulated so I had to keep the docs at home. I was an absent-minded driver, trying to remember where those docs could be.

We stopped at Costco for the pictures. Since I needed a picture for the visa, I had my picture taken too. It was a good picture as befitting my age. I looked at myself and realized how time has slipped by all those years. I saw myself in the picture but I did not see myself! How vexing and puzzling!

On the way back home, Mary the post master called. When I picked up the phone, an animated female voice asked me if I wanted to accept the call. It was strange for such a procedure did not occur before. Then it dawned upon me that I left my Google voice number with the post mater. Mary told me that she got our appointment dates mixed up. She told me before it was on the 9th of May but it should be on the 10th. That meant we could be seen the next day.

When we got home, mom had the dinner ready but I was too preoccupied to eat. I set out to look for the birth certificates in all the possible places I could think of. My hunt turned up some treasures. I found a few jewelry boxes wrapped tightly in an old T shirt. I also found the tags and birth cards from the hospitals when the kids were born, the torn apart but patched up cards J wrote for me years before. Among the treasures, I spotted my old and expired Chinese ID, my old work ID in China, my diplomas, my grad school transcripts from China, a couple of handwritten letters of recommendations by my old professors, a list of my friends and family members’ lunar and solar birth dates on a sheet torn from a notebook, some Chinese banknotes that were likely not in circulation any longer, and other odds and ends that have become part of my personal history.

Yes, I found the birth certificates too. In fact, I found many copies for each child, all in color. I tried to figure out which were the originals and which were copies. I lifted each sheet and held it against the light attempting to detect the watermarks, but to no avail. Finally my fingers touched the small round seals towards the bottom of the certificates. The seals on the originals were slightly protruded while as the copies were smooth and shiny. I was so engrossed in the little memorabilia that I failed to notice the difference.Now all were ready. We were ready to return to get the passports done. What a frustrating experience!

We returned the next day and submitted the paperwork. The clerk called forth our kids to see if they matched those in the pictures. Then both J and I had to hold up our right hands to pledge that all info on the applications were true. I wrote out two checks to cover the fees. J, eyeing the total amount on the two checks, pushed across the counter the same amount of cash towards me. ... We were about to leave and then J asked me in an angry whisper why I put a friend and neighbor’s address on the form. I told him because someone has to sign for the passports when they come in express mail I wanted to be sure it would be someone who understand the procedure. My mom would not be able to communicate with the post man in this regard and that was why I left my friend’s and next door neighbor’s address. I told J I could change it back to our own address but by this time the clerk had stapled all paperwork together. Seeing J’s attempt to look at the forms, she reminded sternly that we were not supposed to touch any of the paperwork after her inspection. That would be fine with me.

J headed towards his car but kept saying it was a matter of trust. Trust of what? I was totally bewildered but too exhausted to probe deeper. J drove back to work and I took the kids back home, glad that the passport thing was now out of the way.

That evening J behaved strangely but I did not take it to heart. It was not the first time and definitely would not be the last. So the night went by quietly with me tending a few emails and re-read a few pages of Ha Jin before turned in.

Mid morning the next day, J stopped by and said to me out of nowhere, “The address thing, it better not happen again.” I was totally thrown into darkness but this time it got my attention. Why he kept saying the same thing! He mentioned trust, too.

Finally a couple of hours ago, I realized that he thought I deliberately had the passports sent to the neighbors’ without him knowing about it. He must have thought I was trying to take the kids away from him by having the passports delivered elsewhere.

How ridiculous!

I was absolutely annoyed with a sinking heart!