Vince and I are taking a trip to Ireland next week. I’ve been in full prep mode the past few days, putting together a detailed binder to leave behind so our family can function without us for the short bit we are away.
I’ve gone a bit overboard with it, but that’s who I am. Luckily now I can use AI to create most of the informational sheets I need instead of spending hours doing it myself.
Today, I started prepping documents for us. Planning must-dos outside of our scheduled outings with the tour company, checking to make sure my airplane mask will fit the seats on the plane we’re flying, and making sure I have all our documentation in order.
I pulled out my travel wallet to remove the girls’ birth certificates and passports and make sure I only brought our identification.
Odd. Vince’s passport wasn’t there. Everyone else’s identification was in there, but his. I went to our safe to see if it might be there instead. Those are the only two logical places he or I would put his passport.
After searching through the envelopes of important documents and Vince’s high school report card, which why TF we still have that, I do not know, I realized his passport wasn’t there either.
Anxiety started to surface. This wasn’t good. I went back to the travel wallet and searched again. I opened the zippered pockets and stuffed my hands down into every corner to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
Empty. Save for some Band-Aids and my travel stevia – because no one ever has it and I hate using the pink or yellow crap.
Maybe it’s in the toy room? I had given Evie my old license to play with, and I thought I might have seen a passport in her “mommy pretend box” at some point.
I went upstairs and began ransacking the toy room. Bin by bin, I looked for the blue book. Crashing around and making a commotion, Vince noticed from downstairs and yelled up asking what I was doing.
“Looking for your passport,” I yelled down. I waited for the freak out. The spaz explosion that was surface-of-the-sun hot at the thought that his passport was missing and we were scheduled to leave the US in one week.
Surprisingly, the man didn’t lose his shit. He stayed relatively calm, which is a 180-degree turn from the way he would have reacted to this news a few years ago. Especially so close to international travel.
He calmly started searching on his computer for what he needed to do to try and get a new one issued in t-minus like no days. I’ll accept this reaction, though…. who the hell is this person??! Stressed over the missing blue book, I didn’t dwell on the personality change any further and instead continued my frenzied search of the house. Every illogical place, I looked in it.
Nowhere. It was nowhere. I was getting defeated. Confused. Worried.
Then I came out of the bedroom, walked over to the kitchen counter, and…
The passport was there. Peeking out of my gray wallet.
I’m crazy. I’m literally crazy. It has happened folks. My mind is pulling a full on “The Notebook” right now. Take my keys, I am not fit to drive. Take me off the bank accounts. This is real.
I yelled to Vince from the kitchen, “Oh my God, Vince. IT’S RIGHT HERE!” How did I miss this?
“You need to commit me. I don’t know how I didn’t see this.”
Then I started crying. Actual tears, because I genuinely thought I was beginning to lose my mental capabilities. There was no way I should have missed that blue book if it had been in my wallet. I searched it twice.
I pushed the passport fully into the sleeve it had been sitting in when I found it on the counter. The corner of the passport poked out. Had it been in there the whole time I would have seen it. I WOULD HAVE SEEN IT. There is no way I could have missed it. Even if I was experiecing dementia.
Which then led me to the only logical conclusion available.
God came over. Or an angel. Or SOMETHING. Some positive, loving energy visited my kitchen and placed that passport there because I cannot fathom it having been there and me missing it before. No kids were home to sneak it there after seeing their mom lose her shit. Vince wouldn’t have done it.
It wasn’t there, and then it was.
When I was young, my Aunt Mary always said my guardian angel worked overtime to keep me safe, given the way I grew up. And here was that angel again. Coming in clutch.
After posting this on my social media, my cousin commented that my aunt’s birthday, had she still been alive, would have been the following day. So maybe this was her, helping her psuedo-adopted daughter out. I might not have her huge soft hugs anymore, but I still have her looking out for me.
Some miracles are big and some are a blue passport peeking out of a gray travel wallet you searched two times before.
Or else… I’m truly losing my mind.