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Sobbing and Same-Day Passports
by Becky Brett
Submitted: Tuesday, December 02, 2008
This fall was my busiest ever. Even more so than when I worked full time for the Chicago Humanities Festival. It was, in a word, unreal. As a reward, my husband (who also had been putting in some ridiculous hours) and I decided to take a short cruise vacation to relax and reconnect.
Hubby and I got home from our various work-related things late the night before we were to leave, and as we’re packing I casually mention my passport. And he says, “Do I need my passport?” And I say, “Yes. Why? Don’t you have it?” And he says, “No.” And what happened over the next 18 hours can only be described as … not at all vacation-like.
It was late, so we couldn’t get to the bank box to get his passport out, and our flight was leaving at 6am, with the next flight out on that airline leaving at 4:45pm. We were screwed either way.
I optimistically thought for sure with his driver’s license and a copy of his passport (which he did have) we’d be able to get on the boat at the very least. I mean, we’d cruised with this line before, so it wasn’t like we were strangers to them. Then we could have his mom overnight the passport to our first port of call, Key West, FL, and continue with the trip. I was vastly mistaken. When I was finally able to call the cruise line, the only answer I got from any of them was, “No.”
No, we won’t let him on the ship.
No, you can’t board in Key West because of the Jones Laws (google it)
No, we really don’t care about all the long hours you’ve worked and the money you’ve paid for this trip. You should have bought vacation insurance.
So there I am sitting on the floor of baggage claim of the Ft. Lauderdale airport, surrounded by our luggage, on what is supposed to be the first of many hard-earned relaxing days in a row, in full sobbing meltdown. I was only getting angry and frustrated on the phone with the cruise line, and they were not helping me with any options. No advice on how we could get him a passport on such short notice. Not even a “I can tell you’re very upset. It must be frustrating to plan a vacation and have things not work out.” No sympathy from them at all. Just, “Well it says all over our website that you have to have a passport, so you have to have a passport.” I KNOW what the website says, and guess what? It still did not happen.
Oh, it was bad.
One of the customer service reps even said, “It’s not us, it’s homeland security. You would need to talk to them.” So you know what? I did talk to them. My sister in law happens to work for homeland security, so I gave her a call. (Still sobbing. At this point I could not stop to save my life.) She talked to friends in immigration, customs and the state department passport office. She told me we could get a passport in Miami and even called to make the appointment for us. Everything she did for us was public information anyway, you just needed to know where to look.
Right now, as I write this, my husband is up in the passport office getting his new passport. I couldn’t join him because apparently we had hazardous materials in our luggage, so I’m at a Starbuck’s (which is a whole different article). If he gets it by 2pm, we should be able to make the boat. If not, then our vacation is … well it won’t be what we thought it would be. I don’t know what we’ll do.
What I did learn was, crying didn’t help the situation one bit. That fact didn’t stop me, because sometimes you just can’t help it. And actually, I feel kind of better now for having released all that tension. Also, if you’re near a regional passport office, you can get a passport in a few hours with enough money and the right documentation. The final unfortunate lesson I learned is that by letting my husband fail (by not taking care of every single detail myself), the situation hurt me just as much as it hurt him. Plus, now we’re out several hundred dollars (cabs from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami and back, plus the passport fees). I only hope that all this crying emptied me of the anger and frustration, too, so that I can (hopefully) enjoy the next several days.
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