Show and Tell: Grandma's Passport

Welcome to Show and Tell! After you've read this (and let me know you did by commenting!) please check out what the rest of the class has to view!

Today I'd like to share my Grandmother's Passport. But, before I do, I think a little bit of history is in order to understand what it means to me.

My parents met in Central America. They spent the first eighteen months of my life down there. My father, a six foot two -American geophysicist, met my four foot nine -Guatemalan
mother at a New Year's party. They married there and eventually were expecting and living in The Dominican Republic. My father was pretty set on having me be born "in the U.S.", so he would fly my mother to all her doctor's appointments in Puerto Rico where it was planned I'd be born. I was due on Christmas Day.

My grandparents (my father's parents) made special plans to come down to Puerto Rico for the birth. They loved to travel in their motor home and so they started the trek driving from Ohio to Florida and then flying into San Juan. They only made it as far as Cincinnati. My grandfather died of a heart attack in his sleep. It was the week of Thanksgiving.

My devastated parents jumped on a plane and made their way to Ohio. Despite the fact that my mother was, (especially in her short stature) way too pregnant to be flying, she made it on the plane. She was wearing my father's overcoat and since she was leaning into him crying, no one noticed. That is until she took off said coat at 35,000 feet. A few jokes about Pan Am having to pay for my college education later, my parents made it to Ohio still pregnant.

Of course, there was no way she could make it back to Central America. I was born one month, one week and one day after my grandfather passed away. It was New Year's Day.

After going through something so tragic as the abrupt loss of a husband/father/grandfather, it meant so much to everyone to be looking forward to something much more hopeful like the birth of a baby. For no one more so than my grandmother. She held me in the hospital within the first hour. (No small feat 30 years ago...remember how they never even let fathers behind those doors?) My parents named me after her, and I forever became known as "Her precious namesake".

At 95 years old, five months ago, she became ill and two weeks later passed away. You'll probably be surprised when I say it was unexpected. She was in great shape for someone her age. She was the only one in the Assisted Living Center with a computer and Internet connection and knew how to use it. Although I knew over the last ten years that my time with her was getting shorter, I still can't tell you how hard it was to loose her.

I found her old passport in her office when she first became ill and looked it over. It was the passport she had when I was born. I looked at all the dates and the places and immediately thought of all the photos I was familiar with of her travels. After I was born in Ohio, eventually my parents went to Guatemala to show me off to my mother's side of the family and then to Venezuela for a while when my dad's company moved him there. Grandma spent about 8 months down there. She even taught English for a while.

I used the passport as inspiration when I had to give a eulogy at the service. Here is a excerpt from it,

I know I was special to my grandmother because since I was born so shortly after my grandfather passed away I helped heal her heartache and she was special to me because she was the only grandparent I have ever really known. I will always be proud to carry her name but I will spend the rest of my lifetime never being able to fill her shoes.

A memento that I will always cherish is this passport. I have carried it with me everyday since I ran across it a few weeks ago. It was the same passport she used to visit me when I was just a baby in Central and South America, 30 years ago. Every place I have ever been, she has more than likely been there before me...

As I picture myself following in her footsteps I think about where she is right now. I think about how she didn't need her passport. Her visa was written by God paid for by our Lord and Savior. And lastly she will be waiting for me when my footsteps finally catch up to hers.

Amazingly, the first stamp in that passport to visit me in Guatemala is this one: May 19, 1979.


My husband and I were married in Guatemala, May 19th 2001.