Yesterday I spent the day with my kick-ass Grandma, Yvonne, in San Jose.  She’s slowly trying to go through everything in her house, clean up and get organized (no small feat for an 83-year-old broad).

Her office was the room de jure yesterday and we spent the entire day sorting through stacks of paper, boxes of dated office supplies (the woman has an original Crayola Crayon set from when there were only 16 colors!), mounds of cards and letters, and pretty much anything else imaginable.

The thing that I love about Grandma’s house is that there is just so much stuff and you never know what you’re going to find.  An unsuspecting shoe box might yield the Civil War journal of a long-ago soldier in the family, or a whicker basket might produce cuff links worn by Great-great-Uncle so and so when he shot the clock-tower in town square.

You just never know what might turn up.

After hours of cleaning and sorting and purging there remained a single wooden box on the second closet shelf that we had not opened.

We pulled it out, removed the lid and found that it was filled with letters to and from family members during the last century.  Newspaper clippings, death notices and prayer cards.  A full sheet of NASA space stamps from 1970.  A gold pocket-watch chain. And a leather pocketbook.

Intrigued, I opened the pocketbook and found that it was actually a passport cover.  And it contained the passports of my Great Grandparents.  They were in pristine condition.  I’m not gonna lie, I was giddy about this find!

They were perfect.  Simple.  Clean.

Their photos were glued in for gods sake!

Modern passports have pages and pages of information at the beginning, theirs had just a few concise pages.

I loved that the passport numbers were pin-hole punched out of the cover and first four pages.

The passports had their entry and exit stamps from their big trip to Hong Kong.  It was, in fact, their second trip to H.K.  The first visit was in 1946 when they were invited to sail from San Francisco to H.K. with a group of doctors.  The second trip, in 1974 (when these passports were issued) was for their 50th wedding anniversary.

There were also three Certificates of Registration for Personal Effects Taken Abroad that detailed everything they brought back.  Like a Vienna & Cashmere Coat, red w/black trim by Monet Ltd H.K. and a 115mm Zeiss Telephoto lense (they stocked up on camera equipment and had tons of clothes made).

Also tucked into the leather cover were their International Certificates of Vaccination.

I looked for their earlier passports from 1946, but came up empty handed.  I’m sure they’re somewhere in that house, in a box that hasn’t seen daylight in decades.  Per usual, Grandma’s house did not disappoint!

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