It was a Saturday afternoon, the mail lay waiting on the kitchen counter. I saw the slightly thicker envelope topping the pile addressed to my daughter-in law. When she came in the door my wife casually said to her, “There’s a letter for you, Carolyn, you may want to open it.” She looked at it and read the return address—U.S. Passport Office….. Picking it up somewhat breathlessly she broke the seal. Holding her first passport in both hands she said with almost reverent awe, but with a voice bursting with excitement and tinged with a measure of joyful disbelief: “I have a passport! I have a passport!”
For such moments I live. We travel for many reasons, but prime among them is the opportunity to watch our children thrive in the atmosphere of another country, among other peoples. Most people who travel carry their cameras, snapping shots with each new locality. We too bring our digital memory cards, but the most precious stored images are those held in our minds not those captured in the electronic world of gigabytes. They are the memories, savored and relived when the tour is long past of connections made between those I love and that broad, wide, wonderful world of which we are all citizens. These are moments that can never be captured by the limited focus of a lens.
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This article is sponsored by Fun For Less.
