Monaloca

My little girl got her passport in the mail the other day. She looks almost coy in her first mugshot, taken at six months. I?Ä´m so proud. (I guess of me, not her, since it was all my doing.)

I didn’t get my first passport until age 19, when the seed of adventure had been planted by various childhood road trips – some with our Aljo trailer, some connecting the dots of drive-up motels along an AAA map. During my first trip abroad (granted, a full year studying in France and traveling western Europe), I developed the full sense of wanderlust that took me through my twenties and early thirties, and remains, though slightly buried, today.

I hope Melina grows to love travel as much as I do. We’ve just booked plane tickets for a trip to Portugal in May. My parents will join us, making a four-to-one ratio with the little Jelly Bean. We?Ä´re probably crazy to take an 11-month-old on a transatlantic flight. My guess is she?Ä´ll be at the almost-walking stage, where she’ll want only to hold onto our hands as we walk her up and down and up and down and up and down the aisle…

P.S. The smile photo is not her reaction to her new passport, but a priceless expression captured by a friend at a New Year’s Day party last week. Thanks, Tracee!

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