A Disaster Becomes a Gift

This is not strictly about my upcoming world cruise, but it's something I definitely want to document, and here is as good a place as any.

In 2009, I spent nine weeks in Russia trying to improve my Russian language skills. As I approached the Lufthansa gate to return home, I reached into my purse for my passport. It wasn't there. It wasn't there the next five times I reached for it, shuffling through the contents, emptying them onto a nearby chair, unzipping every zipper, opening every fold, shaking the upside-down purse frantically, looking into the empty purse as if somehow if I just looked harder ... no passport. "You cannot travel without a passport," the Germanically courteous Lufthansa attendant informed me. And a few hours later, the airplane to which I held a ticket took off without me.

I was in Russia without a passport. I freaked out. I then, in freak-out mode, managed to lose my cash card in an ATM. And then my cell phone, with the contact information for the dozen or so people I knew in Russia, died.

And yet here I am. Clearly I did not get sent to Siberia. I did not disappear into a Russian jail or end up wandering the streets of Moscow, one of innumerable old women begging for kopecks* on a street corner. I eventually climbed down from the freak-out, called the help line for my travel insurance, got temporary documents from the Russian police, a temporary passport from the American embassy,  a new plane ticket, and a hotel room for the interim.

And why am I revisiting this now? Because I just read an essay about how cell phones are preventing young people from the adventure of cutting ties to home and setting off on adventures that let them define themselves. And it occurs to me that you don't have to be young to have self-defining adventures. What a gift that was! Three major crutches -- passport, cash card, phone contacts -- pulled away, and I figured out what to do, did it, and got home.

*A kopeck is worth 1/100 of a ruble. A ruble is worth about 3 cents. And there really are a lot of old women begging for them on Russian streets.