The tale of my daughter’s passport photo
My passport picture isn’t very friendly. At the time I had a lot of hair and it was unruly. Also, official government photos of me are overwhelmingly terrible because I look my best when I’m caught in a smile, and if there’s one thing they tell you in official government situations, it’s that you’re not allowed to smile, or emote, or basically be a human being.
Moreover, my passport photo was taken in the concrete sterility of the Palisades Center U.S. Post Office. You have post offices, and then you have post offices anchoring a corner of the third level of an enormous indoor shopping mall off the commuter ribbon of Interstate 287. Even when the doors open at 10 a.m. the line is five people deep, and everyone is sleepy eyed and frustrated about having to spend their time here. Even the workers don’t seem very happy, which — sure — is par for the course in many government offices, but this place is shoved inside a busy shopping mall, which means any and everyone comes here with post office etiquette being the last thing on their minds. They don’t have paperwork filled out. They don’t have envelopes and stamps. They get needy and then angry. So, as you can imagine, passport photos taken at the Palisades Center U.S. Post Office typically don’t produce optimal results.
We were fully aware of the disappointment of the Palisades Post Office when we woke up three Saturdays ago. Our usual Saturday routine starts with breakfast sandwiches and thoughts about what we should do with the rest of the day, but on this Saturday, literally while getting out of bed, Sarah decided this was the perfect time to rush into the car and visit the Palisades Post Office. Genevieve needed a passport because we’re likely visiting Canada in June, and we had been putting off the ordeal because of life. Well, here’s a perfectly good Saturday morning where we were all together (both parents need to be present for a child to get his or her passport, though there are “absentee parent” forms). We can get in and get out, said Sarah. No problem.
Right.
We strolled up to the post office at 10:04, and of course, the place was busy. There’s a single worker who deals with passports and immigration, and he directed us to the necessary passport paperwork (“No, the BEIGE form”) before sitting us down. Two or three other people also filled out passport forms, so I hurried the pen across the form while watching them with one eye. There was no damn way I was waiting any later than necessary. I rushed to find the phone number and address of Genevieve’s emergency contact (thanks, Big Google), while Sarah remembered the kid’s social security number. I finished filling out the form and went back to the passport desk. “I’ll call you soon.” We went back to our seat. We waited.
We waited as other people walked into the post office, did their official business and left happily. We waited as bigger kids sprawled on a hard couch. We waited as another couple with a baby inside a designer stroller walked in asking about child passports, clearly not doing any prior research, which is truly the problem with this post office. Most people who come in here don’t do the research, and you can imagine it peeves the workers to no end. The couple stirred for a second while looking over the beige form, then left because they must’ve thought waiting for more than three minutes for anything was a crime. I try not to label people, but I had about three or four for this couple immediately.
Meanwhile there was Genevieve, growing ever more frustrated with sitting in her stroller without entertainment. She started whining, so I played the game where I pretend she’s kicking me, which got her laughing. Then she saw a pen.
Genevieve loves pens. She now walks around holding onto pens like they’re her only connection to reality. Often she’ll grab a sheet of paper or sketch book, then place it on the floor and try to draw with the pen. This is awesome because I spent approximately 30 percent of my childhood lying on the floor and drawing things on sketch paper. That led to me writing things on paper, then typing things on screens. Maybe Genevieve is following in my footsteps, or maybe she just loves pen and paper. Either way it’s awesome.
It’s also maddening because when you’re a writer, you have a million pens scattered about the house, and sometimes Genevieve isn’t allowed to hold a pen. If you want to make Genevieve angry, forbid her from having a pen.
So at the post office Genevieve noticed a pen, and because we weren’t about to unleash hell on the unfortunate souls in the sterile room with us, we gave her the pen. She was happy. Then the passport worker called us over and approved our paperwork. We were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Just one more thing,” he said. “Do you need a picture of her?”
Okay, there are two ways to make Genevieve angry. One is forbidding her from having a pen. The other way to make our daughter angry is to put a camera in front of her.
Look, your child might have a thing with Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and there’s probably a bad Sears Portrait Studio tale in there. Genevieve took her first Santa picture with the big guy at a Bass Pro Shop in Texas, because that’s apparently where you do Santa pictures in Texas, and the results are hilarious. She’s red-faced, scared, angry, howling, all of it, while Santa happily and professionally poses in this world of rifles and mounted trout. I’m sure you have a similar story, though maybe not in a place with camouflage vests, and that’s one thing. But Genevieve doesn’t like pictures, period. If the chick even senses that you’re about to hold the phone up to your face, she’ll turn, scream and want to slap the taste out of your mouth.
So we were at the post office, one final step from finishing this morning headache and moving on with our lives. The worker emerged from the back with a hilariously oversize Post Office camera, and Sarah, holding Genevieve and clearly making great decisions, thought this was the moment to take the pen away from Genevieve.
Strike one. It took three minutes to calm her down as the worker started mentioning the photo kiosk on the fourth level that can take a passport photo of Genevieve, because the woman at the post office who normally worked with kid photos wasn’t around. The guy was already setting it up to pass the buck.
Genevieve settled down, and Sarah walked to the dark alcove where the post office took passport photos, but may as well have been a miniature jail cell. “Just turn so she can face me,” and at that moment Genevieve realized what was happening. She glanced at the giant camera, whipped her head around, squirmed and cried. Strike two.
Sarah started bouncing as Genevieve picked up. The worker sighed and grumbled. Everyone in the post office fixed themselves. I rolled my eyes.
The worker mentioned the photo kiosk again. “Stop mentioning the damn photo kiosk,” I mumbled to myself. Genevieve was red-faced and shrieking. Sarah tried once more. The worker positioned himself. The camera came up. Genevieve wailed. Strike three.
The post office customers shook their heads. I felt a chill run through my veins. The worker returned to the desk and wrote the name of the photo kiosk on a small piece of paper, handing it to me as I nearly erupted. Genevieve calmed down, of course, but it didn’t matter. We were being forced to try another option. We walked out of there trying to laugh but, inside, very frustrated.
This is when I took it out on Sarah: “We should’ve just taken a picture ourselves.” I’m an idiot. Clearly I’m pointing this toward Sarah, trying to put my frustrations on her. She wasn’t having it. Still, we went to the damn photo booth.
At the photo kiosk was a young man looking at his phone and would probably be unaware if a meteor struck the food court behind us. He didn’t actually notice us until his boss — a cherub man two bucks short of a car salesman wandering the floor while wearing a bluetooth earpiece — came over, scoured the situation for a split second and just said “Passport picture.” Clearly this wasn’t the first time our friend at the post office had passed the buck.
The young guy set up a white backdrop while we moved around the kiosk to get in position for a photo, which would most surely be another $15 or so. But at the moment Sarah stopped in front of the backdrop, Genevieve once again knew exactly what was happening. She covered her face, whined, cried and turned red.
The hapless photo guys then pulled out a white t-shirt, which apparently is the backup solution for angry children. We tried quietly holding the t-shirt behind Genevieve as she, unaware of the situation, looked relatively calm for a second. Nope. Didn’t work. Somehow this child knew what the white t-shirt meant, what these odd people meant, and what we were trying to do here. We put Genevieve back in her stroller and thought the shirt could go behind her as she sat. She cried in her seat. Sarah wanted to see if they could take a photo as she walked behind white walls. She still cried. Nothing worked.
I, being a man child, was visibly frustrated and tired and angry, not helping Sarah try to make the best out of what had become a hilariously annoying situation. We had now wasted two hours. We hadn’t eaten breakfast. What we (okay, she) thought would take a half-hour tops had turned into an all-morning affair. Our Saturday plans started to run away from us. And this child just wouldn’t stop being angry about cameras.
We walked the mall. Sarah would spot some white wall, thinking this was the golden opportunity to just take a photo and see if the post office would accept it. Genevieve wouldn’t stay still. There’s a roll on my phone of about 10 photos of Genevieve in various forms of rage against some off-white bathroom area wall at the Palisades. It was futile. We finally decided to just head back to the post office, tell the guy it wasn’t happening, and see if the woman who normally did kid photos was around. Or just wait five hours until she showed up. Whatever. Not like we were doing anything else now.
Dejected, we walked into the post office. “Sorry man, it ain’t happening.”
“Well, the lady is back, so you can try with her. Just go over and ask her.”
This female worker at the Palisades Post Office, whose name now escapes me, was an absolute angel. She immediately asked Genevieve her name and talked to her, and seemed unperturbed with the thought of another crabby kid. We walked back to the dark alcove area for the picture. She brought up the camera.
Nope.
The shriek was louder than ever. Everyone inside the post office looked over at us. The woman calmly tried again and again, but Genevieve wouldn’t even look her way let alone quiet down. So the woman then asked us to walk to another part of the post office, near another white wall. Suddenly we were the attraction — people in line and other families watched us, some cheering us on, as we prayed and wished for this devil child of ours to be still for just one quick photograph. Sarah bounced her. I looked at her and made funny faces. She opened up just a little, but she was still crying.
And then something changed. Genevieve noticed a big kid, a 5-year-old girl with big curly hair and a quizzical face. She was intrigued and composed herself. The girl, probably just annoyed with a crying child, started to walk away. “No! Wait! Come back!”
Her mother, who looked like she was tearing up watching us pull off this impossible feat, stopped her kid and brought her back. “Look at the baby,” she told her, eyes wide as she prayed for us. Other kids joined in, each of them telling Genevieve to look at them as the post office worker positioned herself and waited for the head to turn to her. I made faces and called to her. Sarah bounced her. The kids egged her on. Everyone else in the post office watched with baited breath, some pumping their fists and clutching their faces like it was the final episode of Breaking Bad.
Genevieve turned her face, then turned it back, then turned it again, and all the while the woman snapped away. One photo was all we needed, so she took what seemed like 2,000 of them. And after 10 seconds, though it seemed like 10 minutes, she stopped and said “I think I have something here.” Everyone in the post office sighed. Some people cheered. We just hoped.
Minutes later the woman reemerged from the back with a contact sheet. “They’ll take this one,” she said.
Genevieve looks like she was just told her cat was run over by a tractor trailer. It doesn’t matter. It worked. She has her passport, and after three hours at the Palisades Center, we had our lives back. So we immediately went to a bar for beer and burgers.
