nine years and 100 stamps

I'm getting a new passport because I was told that I couldn't travel to the United States on my current one. This is understandable, since the picture doesn't look like me. I know a lot of people say that- but it's 9 years old, I was blonde, had long hair and was a serious (if young) business woman- looking a bit older than I do now yet my face was bigger because I still had more baby fat. For years now, people in passport control have held it, turned it, squinted, put it next to my face and raised their eyebrows in challenge as if to say, "Oh come on..this isn't you!" I smile and say, "Look at the nose! Look! It's the same!" I have to point out the nose because my eyes are usually dark blue or green and at the time they were very clear blue.

Further- as if that wasn't enough- it's not up to the new USA regulations for passports, being an old one from the days of lamination. This alone might not be an issue since it's a US passport, but the lamination is peeling despite having been taped and glued down a number of times. Then there is the matter of the moisture that got inside of the lamination, giving my face a watermark that looks amazingly like the phantom of the opera's mask. (That happened despite being sealed away, while on a white water rafting trip in the Amazon- unless it was the one in Indonesia...I forget which). The edges are worn and you can't really tell from the writing outside anymore that it used to say PASSPORT, have a seal and the name of the issuing country on it. I filled up the original book nearly 3 years ago and so I have a second book that was stapled by my embassy inside the first one, so that my passport is roughly the size of a pocket novel. Luckily, the musty storage room on an old ship smell from two years in the Maldives has mostly gone away, although there are rust marks from the staples of the countries who stapled bits of paper inside of it instead of shelling out the money for stickers for their visas.
Hmm..the outside cover is peeling off as well.

It will be nice to have a passport that actually looks like me- especially since I have difficulty signing my name the way I did 9 years ago. Still, it's like the end of an era. It was my first passport. When I got it, I was so excited- I left the country 2 days later. "Now the world is my oyster!" I exclaimed with glee...and it was. It is still. My entire existence and perception of life has changed in those 9 years and 100 stamps and visas. I've been around the world 4 times and lived on every continent except for Africa and Antarctica. Traveling and learning about the world first hand was my greatest dream since I was a little girl- and yet I never imagined that I would get to do so much.

Life is a beautiful thing.