I am a control freak.
If you’ve been around here for a few years, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. I like things my way. I like to be in control. I run a tight ship. I am organized to a fault, and I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies when it comes to cleanliness (hey, hi, it’s me, the girl who can’t go to bed at night if there is even a hint of something not perfectly clean in my house and who runs the vacuum through my giant SUV every single time I get home in it).
Hey, I’m not perfect (but my house and car are). This week has been a lesson for my control freak tendencies, and no one is surprised by how poorly I handle that. This week, I’ve become a detective, against my will, attempting to solve a mystery, rectify a travel emergency, and remain calm.
Welcome to the great passport plot saga of 2026
My mission in life right now is tracking a passport that may or may not be currently enjoying a solo vacation somewhere in the United States Postal Service. No good deed goes unpunished, right?
As we embark upon the final weeks before an international vacation with our four kids and our bonus son (who we suspect will one day be our son-in-law), that is the graduation gift we gave our daughter and her boyfriend of over three years, we are one passport short. Now listen…passports are complicated on a good day. Locked in the safe when they are not in use, it’s a constant battle between “wait, our passports are good for 10 years…what year did we renew them?” and “children’s passports are only valid for five years, that’s annoying.” (Thankfully, mine and Craig’s still have a few years before we have to renew).
Oh, and Riley’s never had a passport. So, back in mid-May, we went to the Clerk’s office, five kids in tow, five passport applications, and eleventy billion dollars in fees, and we finalized the last detail of our international vacation.
The Raiford kids’ passports arrived in under three weeks. Riley’s passport? Well…therein lies the issue. We don’t have it. And we leave in just over two weeks. Vacation wardrobes have been ordered, flights booked, reservations made, dinners planned, and after an entire day of phone calls, begging and pleading, and possibly tears (mine), we were able to ascertain that his passport was approved and mailed a week after his application was sent in.
Unfortunately, the tracking information shows that it was last scanned five weeks ago on June third in Arkansas. So…we believe it’s lost. And the passport people can’t help us until exactly 14 days before our departure, so we are sitting here with our hands tied for a few more days. The next step is to call first thing in the morning, 14 days before our flight, and schedule an in-person emergency passport appointment at the nearest passport agency…in Miami. Or Atlanta. So, we will just roll with the punches, handle it a day at a time, and not let this take over every thought I have until then (HA!).
At this point, I do believe I have become an unpaid employee of both the USPS and the US Department of State after all the detective work I’ve done to locate this passport and figure out what our next steps are. All while hoping that his passport is just taking the scenic route and will show up in the mailbox before we have to make an appointment to go a million hours away.
There’s a lesson everywhere
I’m reminding myself that the universe has a funny way of teaching us lessons we need to learn, even when we don’t want to learn them. Apparently, my lesson this summer is, “Tiffany, darling…you cannot control everything.” And that is so dumb (but obviously necessary).
I’m a planner. I have lists for my lists. I book reservations months in advance, and I know what everyone will pack before we even get the luggage out of the storage closet. I organize my closet by item type, season, and color. Chaos and I are not friends. Yet here we are.
Life is reminding me to take a deep breath, calm the hell down, and go with the flow. It will all work out. It will all be fine. One day, this is going to be one of those family vacation stories we all laugh about: “Remember when Riley almost ruined our trip even though he actually didn’t do anything wrong?” And then my family will all laugh and say, “Remember what a psycho mom was when we found out his passport was missing?” And they won’t be wrong…entirely. I’m good now. But there was a hot hour of spiraling.
The good news is that this is a first-world problem. This is a situation in which things are easily (albeit inconveniently) fixable. And honestly, sometimes the best stories usually start with something like, “Remember when…”.
Anyway, the lesson here is that I have to get over myself, stop with the control freak tendencies, and remember that not everything that doesn’t go my way is the end of the world.
But I can damn sure assume that I’ll have another mental breakdown or two between now and then. We’ll call it part of my charm. That and stalking USPS’ tracking page for the time being.
Tiffany Raiford 