Changing Cards, Changing Chapters

Changing Cards, Changing Chapters

Yesterday, I did something that should have been utterly mundane.

I took my New Hampshire state ID out of my wallet and replaced it with my new Florida one.

That’s it. One little plastic card came out; another little plastic card went in.

And yet, for a moment, it felt weird.

The New Hampshire ID hasn’t even expired. Far from it. When I received it, I certainly didn’t expect that I’d be leaving New England so soon. As far as I knew, the card and I were going to be together for quite a while.

Life, apparently, neglected to consult either of us.

None of the major moves I’ve made in recent years were carefully plotted changes of scenery undertaken because everything was going hunky dory and I simply fancied a different ZIP code. Circumstances changed. Plans changed. Sometimes life simply shoved me toward the next chapter before I’d finished making sense of the previous one.

My move to the Orlando area from South Miami last year was no exception.

So getting a Florida ID was the sensible, practical thing to do. I’ve been back in the Sunshine State since Fall 2024. Florida is where I live now. A Florida identification card belongs in my wallet.

Still, removing the New Hampshire card felt strangely ceremonial.

Perhaps part of the reason was another piece of identification I’d taken with me to the tax collector’s office: my old U.S. passport, issued in 1987.

Now there is a document with some mileage on it.

That passport accompanied me on my last two overseas trips. It was the passport I carried when I went to Spain in 1988 for my Semester in Spain program, the 88-day experience in Sevilla that became one of the defining periods of my college years. I carried it again when Mom and I traveled to Bogotá in 1993.

And all these years later, there it was again, accompanying me on a considerably less exotic expedition to a government office in Florida.

No Iberia jet. No Madrid-Barajas. No flight across the Atlantic. No customs officers stamping pages.

Just me, some documents, and the business of establishing where I belong now.

Maybe that’s why changing those cards affected me more than I expected.

We tend to think of identification as purely bureaucratic: name, photograph, date of birth, address, expiration date. But sometimes those little pieces of plastic become markers of particular periods in our lives.

My New Hampshire ID says nothing about what happened while I lived there. It can’t explain why I went there, what I expected my life to become, or why I ultimately left. It certainly can’t explain how unexpected the move back to Florida was.

It’s just an ID card.

But until yesterday, it was my ID card.

Now the Florida card occupies its place.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Sevilla lately, and perhaps that’s partly why this small moment struck me. On my last night there in December 1988, I took a long walk through the city. I visited familiar landmarks, including La Giralda and the Torre del Oro, and ran my fingers along their stone walls.

I was ready to go home. I missed Mom. I missed my friends, my bedroom, and the familiar rhythms of life in Miami.

And yet I didn’t want to leave Spain.

At 25, I was already learning something it apparently takes a lifetime to fully understand: moving forward doesn’t require being happy about everything you’re leaving behind.

Yesterday, almost 38 years later, there was no ancient stone beneath my fingertips.

Just two identification cards.

New Hampshire out.

Florida in.

A simple action.

But then, the seemingly simple things are often the ones that make a change feel real.