Of Passports, Photographs and Memories

I took a few moments over the holiday weekend to dig up my old passports ... all three of them. The first passport was from when I was 16 years old; I'll spare you the photos. It was for my first trip "abroad" in 1976 to England, to visit my pen pal who lived in the northern city of Hull. We had a grand time backpacking through the Yorkshire Moors and looking off the cliffs to the North Sea and visiting the seaside town of Scarborough.

The second passport was for my trip to Spain with a dear friend from childhood. We visited her old college friends in Madrid, where she studied as an exchange student. We saw David Bowie in concert during his Glass Spider tour with Peter Frampton. It was the summer of 1988.

The third passport was primarily for trips to and from Canada, when my fiance worked there.

The fourth passport is for Paris, France. It's ready and waiting to be stamped. But I wanted to dig up my old passports because a special photograph was tied up with them. It's shown above, a Polaroid that my pen pal from England took and sent me way back when she and I were just teenagers.

I remember receiving it and thinking, "Wow!" Because my friend was only 15 years old when she went to Paris and photographed the Eiffel Tower. How adventurous, how lucky she was to live so close to that metropolitan and cultural center of life. I suppose it's what sparked in my a desire to go there myself.

My pen pal from England and I still keep in touch with birthday and Christmas cards. And I can't wait to send her the photo of the Eiffel Tower that I will take in 2010!

Until Paris ...

PS The price of passports in the US goes up on Tuesday July 13th, fyi!