Senioritis

I was stoked when I finally got my passport renewal in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Even though I have no plans for international travel, the past 10 months have been the first time since 1975 that I couldn't hop on a plane and fly out of the country whenever the opportunity presented itself. But I was busy in Minnesota in August, back to school in September, Back to Minnesota in October, and on to the holidays in November and December, and so on.

In short, I just didn't make the time to get my photo taken. So when the UPS store reopened in phase whatever of the pandemic, and I happened to be there dropping off a return package, I seized the opportunity and a quick, maskless picture snapped. Truth be told, I didn't love the photo, but who actually likes their passport picture? So, I printed the form, stapled my picture, wrote the check, put my old passport in the envelope and sent it off, acknowledging the advisory on the State Department website that there are delays due to Covid-19.

Imagine my delight and surprise then, when last week a package arrived from the passport office. Hooray! I cheered as I tore it open, only to discover a polite letter informing me that I had forgotten to enclose payment with my paperwork. I could have sworn I had written that check, but I took the whole experience as a sign to get my photo retaken, which is exactly what I did today, right after leaving the DMV (where I successfully renewed my license and got a REAL ID!).

The new picture was a little more to my liking, and upon returning home, I gathered my passport, the application, replaced the old 2x2 image with the new, and whipped out my checkbook to make sure I completed the process this time. And that is where I found the check I had written before, dutifully recorded in the register, but still attached to the book, by far the most egregious of all my senior moments to date.

But, fortunately? Easy to remedy, AND that new picture!

Let's Get Real

My driver's license was set to expire at the end of June, and the DMV would not let me forget it! Throughout the spring I received reminder after e-mailed reminder. The trouble was, the DMV had closed all of their locations in response to the COVID-19 crisis. When at last they rolled out some limited office hours, by appointment only, none of our service centers up here in Northern VA were open yet. And still the no-reply messages came reminding me to renew my driver's license!

 Finally, I was able to schedule an appointment for July 7, just a week after my ID became invalid. Technically, the governor extended all DMV documents for three months, but tell that to Safeway where they scan the barcode to see if you are of age to buy beer, no matter how many laugh lines you can point to around your eyes.

Starting in October, airlines will require REAL ID for anyone planning to travel, and my new license will be verified to use that way as long as I bring the required documentation with me to my appointment tomorrow. Like most things bureaucratic, the directions were several pages long and not as clear as I would liked. Even the one-page overview was a bit complicated in its explanation of required documents and list of "Most commonly used documents," so I set aside some time today to gather my paperwork so I'll be all set when I put on my face mask and head over to the DMV not earlier than ten minutes before my appointed time.

Fortunately, I had read the list before and I knew that, since my passport was expired and out for renewal, that I would need a copy of my birth certificate, which I ordered a few weeks ago from the DC Vital Records Department. I also knew right where my social security card was, and then it was only a matter of setting aside the mortgage statement and the power bill when I paid them this month. (That's right-- I don't have paperless delivery! I also still get the newspaper delivered to my door. What a dinosaur! You'd think they would sell me some beer at the grocery store based on those two facts alone.) Anyway, I think I've got my 

One proof of identity
One proof of legal presence
Two proofs of Virginia residency
• Two from the primary list, or
• One from the primary list and one from the secondary
list
One proof of your social security number, if you’ve been
issued one
Current driver’s license if you are applying to exchange one
issued by another U.S. state, territory or jurisdiction for a Virginia
driver’s license

and hopefully, I'll have a REAL ID sometime tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I might have to call on the Blue Fairy.

From Coast to Coast and Around the World

If you read my 8x8 series last week, you know that I'm a fan of both lists and the 70s, so it shouldn't be surprising that from time to time I like to tune to the 70s on 7 station on the satellite radio in my car, especially on Saturdays when they replay an entire edition of Kasey Kasem's American Top 40. They choose an episode from the current week, but in some year of the 1970s.

As I listen, I reach back in time and try to place myself where I might have been when the playlist was new. It's often pretty hard to figure out what was going on during some random week of nineteen seventy whatever, but not so yesterday. The date was July 4, 1970. I was 8 years old and my family walked down the street and around the corner to watch the town Independence Day Parade.

It was hot and the sun was shining in my eyes uncomfortably when I noticed my parents chatting with two strangers, a couple who, it turned out, had just moved in across the street from us. When the parade was over, our new neighbors invited us over for a cold drink.

Their house had air conditioning, which was a novelty in New Jersey back then, and they had the curtains drawn to keep the refrigerated air in. They also had wall to wall carpeting, and I'll never forget the cool, dim, silence that greeted us upon entering their home for the first time. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, it was clear that they did not have any children-- everything was cream and white, and there was nothing of interest to my brother and sister and me, so we sat stiffly on the couch next to my mother. The men drank beers, and the women had wine, but the only thing they had for us was ginger ale or diet ice tea. I picked the latter, and immediately regretted my choice after the first saccharine sip.

We didn't know it then, but these folks would become some of my parents' dearest friends: playing bridge and drinking together almost every weekend, double dating for the church charity balls and casino night, celebrating our birthdays, trick or treating with us on Halloween, and adopting one of our cat's kittens. And when their first child was born a two years later, he spent his first Christmas with us because his mom was visiting his dad who was stationed in Okinawa for the year.

Over the next fifty years we would visit them in Jacksonville, NC, Monterey, CA, and Bangkok, Thailand. My mother would move to Virginia Beach, VA when she split from my dad, because they were living there, and my sister, brother, and I, and eventually even my dad, would all follow. We lived in two different houses, right down the street from them. My sister and I babysat their kids, and we took their son to his first concert.

Like the long and winding road the Beatles sang of in the single that was number four that week, our common story will never disappear, but it first hit the charts on July 4, 1970.

Plane Old Planes

My dad was a guy who could tell you what kind of airplane it was that was flying over your head. He would point to the sky and say 707 or L1011 or DC9. Maybe it was because he worked for the airline, but it might have been why he worked for the airline; I’m sorry to say I never thought to ask. Still, as members of an airline family, we kids could identify the planes at the gate as we walked by the huge plate glass windows, and we always asked what kind of a plane it was before we left for any trip.

Back then, the popular new kid was the L1011, a wide body luxury plane with a lounge and a bar in first class, but the queen of the fleet was definitely the 747. Truth be told, I spent many transoceanic hours crammed into a coach seat on a 747 (thinking of airline seats now though? the width of the seat and the legroom make that experience seem almost first class, or certainly Business, AKA “Ambassador” in TWA speak.) I also spent many hours in both business and first class, thanks to the airline industry's pre-deregulation professional courtesy policy. By any measure, HRH 747 took me a lot of places I wanted or needed to go.

Even so, I don't remember the last time I saw one in person before tonight. That's when, up at my garden to water, came a rumble then a roar as Air Force One (or the plane that is AF1 when the president is aboard) lumbered low in the sky on its way to lead the 4th of July flyover. She was followed by a number of vintage crafts from as far back as WWII, a bunch of helicopters, some jet bombers including the stealth bomber, the Golden Knights, the Thunderbirds, and the Blue Angels. It was quite a show, and I enjoyed it all the way as I walked home. We were right over the flight path.

Heidi was unimpressed. "Am I paying for this?" she asked in irritation, but I couldn't agree. In the words of Tattoo on Fantasy Island, The plane, the plane!

Well Read

I listened to and then watched a recording of five of Frederick Douglass's descendants reading excerpts of the speech he gave in 1852 called, What to a Slave is the Fourth of July? I was familiar with this scathing rebuke to Americans delivered 8 years before the Civil War began, but I was reminded of how wrenchingly relevant those words are today.

The readers were all kids between the ages of 13 and 20, and their voices perfectly fit Douglass's words, strong and rightfully condemning. I was spellbound listening, and I felt almost as if I knew them, and then I realized that they reminded me of so many students I have taught over my career-- smart, passionate, critical, and strong.

I can't wait to hear those voices, again.

I Don't See It

Several folks have mentioned lately that I resemble my mom. They are referring both to photos and my in person appearance, and I take it as the compliment it is meant to be: all who have said so knew and loved her.

But I really wish I saw it too.

What Time Will Tell

Tonight, after a 3 month delay, our writing group is finally going to meet. Responsible citizens we, the plan is to sit outside at a distance of 6 feet dining on individual take out meals. Before we adjourned for the pandemic, our annual Slice of Life Story Challenge celebration was scheduled as the next meeting. It is our tradition to read back through the March writing we have all done and select a favorite piece for each of the four of us.

Truth be told, I think we all love this session because the pressure is off-- the writing is already done. I know that's true for me. I also love it because it gives me the opportunity to read and reread a month of pretty great writing from each of my friends.

And that's what I did this morning; I spent a while revisiting our posts, blog by blog, day by day. Wow! What an extraordinary month to document! On March 1 it hadn't even entered anyone's mind that the corona virus might impact school, let alone close down the entire nation. By the next week, we were considering time away from our buildings with uncertainty, and on March 13 school closed for what we thought would be a month.

Through the next weeks we wrote of distance learning and quarantine, at first a novelty but soon a steady, wearing grind fraught with worry for our students, until on March 24 the governor closed schools for the rest of the academic year.

Re-reading our writing from then, I'm struck with how unaware we were, like children waving on the beach as an enormous wave looms behind them. Even at the end of the month, how little we knew of what was yet to come. It seems like years rather than months since the challenge ended; the crawl of time has been filled with so many enormous events, and I can't help but wonder what I might think when I look back on my writing in another three months.