Traveling Internationally During Military Engagements
I’m in my thirties and have only traveled via plane twice. Once to Boston, MA and other other to Jacksonville, FL. My husband and I are due for our 15th anniversary “honeymoon” … a trip to the Caribbean. We wanted to go for our tenth, but you know, a little virus got in the way. So here we are five years later making the dream a reality. Or so we thought.
As the time for celebration nears, more hiccups appear. First, there’s the passport. I was so excited to receive it in the mail last November. It was shiny. It was official. It was the most important step to getting to our destination. I took it out of the envelope and placed it in a secure location until it was time to leave. One night while I was cleaning, I decided to pull the passport out just to look at how pretty it was. Not my picture, though. My photo has a middle-school-coming-of-age look to it. The lady at Walgreens failed to tell me I had a piece of hair sticking up, and I just wanted the process to be over so I didn’t bother getting another one. Anyways, back to how enamored I was with my book. Looking over the shiny letters, I noticed a mistake! They had me listed as a MALE!!! My whole heart stopped. It was the beginning of February and we leave in the middle of March. My husband, watching me freak out in real time, is as cool as a cucumber. He’s talked to coworkers who have gotten their passports the same day due to extenuating circumstances. Still, I had to play the waiting game and pray my situation rendered the same results because you have to wait 14 days until your departure to even make an appointment to the passport office. Long story short, my passport has been corrected and I’m ready to fly out. Or so I thought … again.
Here’s the second hiccup. When you plan ahead, you can only account for so many unforeseen occurrences. Passport typo … fixed. TSA employees not showing up to work at MSY/Louis Armstrong Airport due to a partial government shutdown causing lines seemingly wrapped around the Mississippi to result in missed flights (see WDSU news article here)? Constantly having to check the status of your destination country to see if it’s safe to fly due to issues in the Middle East since multiple flights have been cancelled/delayed? How do you fix that, especially when your departure date is within the week?
There’s only so much we can do as individuals, and there’s so much more out of our control. My motto is: control the controllables. My husband and I stay in contact with our contacts at the airline and military spaces. We constantly stay up to date via official websites. If it’s advised to arrive at the airport 3 hours earlier, we’ll be there 6 hours earlier instead. We cannot stop what’s going on in the world, but we lessen our anxiety by preparing as much as we can and expecting the worst so we aren’t surprised. I’m actually glad the passport mishap occurred. It was a warm-up to all of the current chaos. Now, I’m not as panicked. Am I concerned? Yes, but not to the point where anxiety is taking over. Our vacation WILL happen whether we make it to the island and back according to plan, or even if we are stuck in an airport for days on end. As long as we are safe and together, it’ll be another anniversary to remember.
