Day 1 – aka Ground Zero

Sometimes the best laid plans go horribly awry. I’m not saying that this travel day was the worst I’ve had (that honor probably still goes to that one time, long ago when I saw my plane take off as I was arriving at the airport), but as Leo accurately observed when Bill asked him what the “mommy-crisis-meter” was reading when they watched me negotiate with the check-in crew, I’m a 7 out of 10 on the crisis meter.

How did that happen??? We had successfully managed to make all our flights to Boston (thanks to decently spaced layovers and planning in time for a potential cancellation or two…), get all our luggage (probably because we all had spare clothes in our carryons), and were in good spirits for another 7 hour flight (a German feast to look forward to! Seafood for dinner at the airport!), only to discover upon checking in for our Transatlantic flight segment that Leo’s passport was two days shy of the 3-month-validity required from the date of return: They weren’t going to let him fly.

What if we could just change the return flight to come back a few days earlier so we would meet the requirements? Nope. The change in fare plus fees would have made that the $11000 option (yes, that says: eleven THOUSAND).

What about the fact that he’s really also a German citizen? Well, as long as we have the paperwork for that (um, no, because he was traveling with a valid passport after all…)

So there’s only option C: get a new passport. The next day. Because at 5:00pm that office is closed for the day.

Now in order for a kid to get a passport (even a renewal), the birth certificate is a required document.  However, when you travel with a valid passport, one of the things you don’t bring is a birth certificate (or a social security card – but more on that in a minute).  And when you are many hours flight away from that document, what do you do?!? Well, in this case you call a hero – ours is called Super-Kate – and send her on mission possible: go to our house, dig through our important document folder, take photos of that required piece of paper and transmit. Of course it helps if you know where you put that kind of stuff – just sayin’…

The passport office in a big travel city deals with these kinds of emergencies pretty regularly (as in: at least a dozen that we saw in the few hours we were there), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t nerve wracking for the applicants.  So even when you have the application form and the photo of the birth certificate printed out at the hotel computer lounge, and when you get the pictures at the local CVS at 7:30 in the morning before the passport office opens at 8:30 (oh, and you want to be there before then – basically before 8, because it’ll be: first come, first served!), and even when you remember just in time that you don’t have you kid’s social security number memorized and you need to text Super-Kate at 7 to ask her to go back to the house and that folder and she has a photo of the number already, because she was thinking ahead —— even then, when you have all you can have, it is still not clear if it’ll work until the agent asks: “Your reservation is for this afternoon?” And then follows up on your nodding with the sweet sounds of “We will make sure we will have the passport ready for you!!” Cue gigantic sigh of relief.

Another bit of waiting later (less than two hours), and Leo is all set through 2023. And now back at the hotel we have a late check-out, a free airport shuttle, and plenty of time to check-in for that Transatlantic flight segment at 5pm (and rebooking that was actually free), which means my crisis meter is back down to a 1 out of 10.

And that sweet grumpy passport from 5-year-old Leo? Well, that’ll make our first souvenir of the trip.