… or am I just losing it? Pt. 2
I have made conscious efforts to reduce my anxiety in such situations, to slow down and not feel rushed by the world
Whatever material they used for the floor of the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, it certainly wasn’t memory foam. I checked that out personally the night I lost my passport on a flight from Cuzco.
My travelling companion, Mike, had an important meeting back in Canada, which left me alone to deal with being a stranger in a strange land, with no acceptable proof of being who I claimed, and no immediate way to get back home.
I was dead-tired, confused, and frustrated. The few benches that existed were already occupied and the all-night cafes held no appeal, so I needed an alternative way to kill the hours until offices opened and the search for my missing paperwork could resume.
A patch of floor in a dimly-lit corner would have to do. Down I went like an ancient Marine, my backpack serving as a pillow and my Mexican lap rug as the only source of warmth.
It went surprisingly well … for about an hour, until the kindly security detail woke me up to suggest I should change my plans. The rest of the night was spent shuffling like an extra from Shawshank Redemption.
I don’t know how long it took until reality fully hit home: I was in a quandary. A return ticket with all the value of a Post-It note, orphaned miles from home, with credit cards of rather shaky dimensions.
Wait! Did I just say credit cards? Did that include the one I used just an hour ago, which doesn’t appear to be in my wallet?
I scurried back to the ATM, to no avail. No platinum card. No note from a friendly stranger saying it had been turned in at the airline kiosk.
Still, no big deal in the grand scale of things. Not like losing a passport, and evidence of being a respected and welcome citizen of at least some corner of the planet. The cash balance was minimal; a simple phone call could (and did) remedy that little hitch.
Here’s where the confessional part comes in.
This was actually the second time in less than a month that I had lost my passport. It had also gone astray on the flight south. Fortunately, a sharp-eyed cabin cleaner in Cancun had found it immediately, so all was right with the world.
The repeat performance — with a less happy result — gave me lots to contemplate over the next three days as I roamed the streets of Lima’s bustling and prosperous Miraflores district.
Like probably every senior starting to face memory loss, I’ve tried not to let it define me, but have tried to look at when it’s most likely to occur, how serious an incident is or is not, and what kind of distractions or stressors tend to accompany it.
I have made conscious efforts to reduce my anxiety in such situations, to slow down and not feel rushed by the world.
As someone who has spent a lifetime wrangling language, when the precise word I want eludes me temporarily, I can usually make a joke, or toss in a nonsense word as a place marker until my word processing system is back on track.
Sadly, many people can’t do that, which can cause great pain and discomfort for them and their loved ones.
There was certainly plenty to occupy my mind over the next few days as I methodically went through all the steps outlined by the extremely helpful young France-born aide at the Canadian Embassy, who cautioned me not to tarry, since his office closed at noon on Friday.
This left me just over 48 hours to get a passport photo, find a travel agent who spoke English, scrape together the cost of a flight from various electronic pockets, and secure the all-important certificate from the Peruvian national police attesting that my passport had been lost or stolen.
Given the apparent popularity of Canadian passports abroad, all this was against the background of worrying when Interpol would show up with a warrant because my papers had been found in the hands of a human trafficking ring.
Back. Forth. Forth, then back again, just for fun. Often by foot. Sometimes by cab, or via Lima’s strange “system” of minibuses of various vintages, some publicly-owned, others privately.
People seem to hop on at random, tossing a sol or a couple of soles into a pan at the front, then hop off randomly wherever they have a whim.
And don’t get me started on Lima’s taxi-driving habits, especially to and from the airport, where the maximum space left between rapidly-dodging vehicles is the thickness of a single coat of paint.
But back to the narrative. After a before-hours call from my new best friend at the embassy on Friday morning, the pieces were clicking into place like a snug little Tetris.
Photo: check. Cash and airline ticket (via Panama, since the U.S. didn’t want any more undocumented aliens in Miami: check. The police certificate, without which I wouldn’t be going anywhere without a deportation order. Check, check, and check).
I’d love to say the losses ended when I finally got back to Canada, but that would be a lie. But that’s a tale for another time.
