Proving You’re Alive

Is what I took my mother to San Francisco today to do.

She could have done this herself, of course: she is, or at least she was at 2:30 this afternoon, alive. But the Spanish government in the person of a woman named Mara Josefa needed to see her, in person, along with a passport and a driver’s license, to put a bureaucratic stamp on the whole thing in person, called a fe de vida. Spanish bureaucracy terrified my mother for 25 years and still does, so I went along too. (It is, admittedly, pretty terrifying.)

When my father died in ‘99 we had to sort through pensions from employers in three countries along with the social security systems of each. It was a long, slow, tedious process. But I’m glad we persevered with the Spanish one, even though it took three years to sort out, because it’s a steady source of income that makes Mum less freaked out about the world in general.

We celebrated our success-and her newly-certified life-by having an early lunch together and then heading our separate ways before the Bay Area Friday exodus could give either one of us ulcers. This evening’s rainbow has reminded me once again how great it is to be alive.