Found and Founder

In which our Hero considers just how long it’s been since he’s been away to sea

Let me start out by saying, yes, I know. I know that on the grand scheme of things, even on the scale of my own actual challenges, this is not such a big deal. I can say that it was like realizing I’d just lost a limb, but I know that’s a little bit hyperbolic. And yet the discovery that my passport has been expired for over a month hit me with multiple causes for nausea.

At the most basic, it is about identity. I have always known about other places and other cultures. It was the nature of my early life and my adult life has only intensified that about me. And I was a good traveller too, so it is a measure of how far from that I have come because a traveller doesn’t let his passport lapse, and a traveller would have occasion to see his passport information without losing track of the expiry date, because most of all a traveller… travels.

It is about freedom. As the stresses of work gather and churn around me, the “gone-postal” contingency plans start with an immediate declaration of indifference, followed by an immediate exit to somewhere less sucky. Like… I dunno… Albuquerque. Except suddenly I’m trapped. Worse, I’ve *been* trapped, a number of weeks, I’d have attempted my escape and then crashed against the invisible walls of my travel cage and then what… retreat to Winnipeg? No, I say. No.

But most of all it’s about a string of trips I’ve been striving to make, trips for various good reasons that were also incidentally minor escapes, and each one failed to come together, despite my fervent hopes. And I’d been suggesting/threatening a visit if some things with Nocturne came together, and I would have lost that. And I can’t say I’d have dealt with that well.

In fact the reason I discovered this was one more shot at travel, at the request of an 8yo niece-y person who (no doubt prompted by her mother) felt very strongly that I should come to her First Communion and let her and her little sister meet me. (Which is techncially not true, I met her on her zeroeth birthday; it’s only her sister that I haven’t actually met). I started to book my ticket and then because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any discrepancy between my id and my ticket (because that brings out the rubber gloves), I checked my passport.

I’m not going to the event. It’s a highly redundant event, anyway, since mom and girls are apparently visiting with us just a few weeks later. But this is the kid’s event, and as much as I’m too strange and too old to be entirely that much interest to her, it’s still good for the kid to see that her family is there for her.

(sigh) I still have to tell her mother, my cousin. To be honest, even though I spent the weekend doing graphic design on her behalf for a project that I personally find distasteful, I’m terrified of my cousin’s reaction. Either she’ll be gracefully disappointed, or she’ll scold me and tease me, and either way, I’ll once again have more little sister than I’m entirely equipped to deal with.