One day in the spring of last year after my great grandmother had passed, I was at her house and looking around her kitchen and discovered a green box on the kitchen counter and I started going through it. My eyes lit up when I spotted the dark navy blue passports with silver font lettering with the United States symbol on it. I opened them and was shocked to discover they were my great grandparents’ passports.

Never having met my great grandfather it was like being introduced to him as soon as I opened his passport. I immediately saw his photo with his ocean blue eyes, salt and pepper hair, and the wrinkles of time on his face. The passport included only a few small facts about him: His birthday March 20th, 1925, his sex, the date the passport was issued April 23rd, 1985, the date the passport expired April 22, 1995, and his full name Rocco Milo Grappone. On the first page for travel listed he had been to Heathrow, an airport in London, for business. 

Finding my great grandfather’s passport finally put a face to the name of a long void I had of not knowing my great grandfather. Thinking of my family as a flower garden, his plot was always empty until now, with the tiny facts learned like tiny pink peony flowers blooming in the dawn of springtime. My great grandfather’s passport is a forever portal to the past, and every time I open it a smile comes across my face knowing I met him in my own special way.

– Alexandria Grappone

Relationship:  unknown unknown