Last weekend I got my 2nd shot of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. It was a big thing, it was a fast thing. It took less than 5 minutes from the time I registered (assisted by the always charming RX Floater, according to the paperwork I was given) to a needle jabbed in the fleshy part of my upper arm.
“Please don’t leave the store for 15 minutes. An abundance of caution.” The pharmacist said.
I didn’t really have anything planned for those 15 minutes so it was fine with me. I resisted the temptation to ask what we were being cautious about. I’m normally sorry when I ask those questions, more accurately, I’m normally sorry when they answer the question. She wasn’t going to say anything pleasant. They never do.
It’s always something like “Uncontrollable weeping,” “Sudden, irreversible hair loss,” “Debilitating thirst, ravenous hunger, diarrhea, constipation, loss of appetite, inability to swallow,” Side effects never include, “Mild euphoria,” “Happy feet,” or “A moment of divine clarity.” In my blissful ignorance, I wandered around the store, keeping an eye on my hair whenever I passed a shiny surface.
It was early so the aisles were mostly empty of shoppers and the shelves were filled and neat. Labels were facing forward, floors sparkled with the clean shine of a fresh overnight scrubbing. There was an order, life seemed to make sense. In a couple of hours, it would be filled with shoppers, the Saturday grocery wars. It starts after lunch and runs until dinner, and it’s similar to watching salmon swimming upstream to spawn, so much motion and madness. Hordes of shoppers competing for the biggest prize, the coveted register receipt, and escape to the parking lot.
That would happen later. Now it was just a few casual shoppers and me, and what I’m sure was a member of the store security team following me around. I wonder if paranoia was one of the side effects I should have been worried about.
Walking out of the store I thought about the future. And, I thought about the last year, maybe the longest year of my life, maybe the worst. But, who wants to try to remember the bad years, let alone rate them?
In a way, it was almost perfect coincidence. Vaccinated in the spring. Life is returning.
Everywhere you look flowers are smiling, and, trees are starting to throw out their leaves in wild celebration. This year the 17-year cicadas are returning in a noisy cacophonic symphony of life. And my world is beginning the slow trip back to its normal, bland, oddness.
Now what? That’s the question, isn’t it? We’ve been not doing anything for so long I’m afraid we might have forgotten how.
Besides, even after the two weeks to allow the antibodies and appropriate cellular response we’re still not home and dry, though we may be home and locating a warm, absorbent towel, if you don’t mind me stretching a metaphor. We will still need to mask-up and practice social distancing and exercise an almost fanatical amount of personal hygiene. Still, though, we’re making progress.
I could get a haircut. Probably not though, I’m really starting to groove on my hair.
When I was young all the cool people had long hair, The Beatles, The Doors, CCR, The Grateful Dead, just to name a few. McNamara, Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Kissinger, Liddy, all those guys (the uncool guys) had short hair. My hair was such a thick, incorrigible mop that it refused to cooperate. Neither did the principal of the Catholic school I attended, who probably had no interest in how cool people looked. Now, thanks to my wife’s hair gel I could probably go another couple of months and still maintain some control.
In two weeks we’re planning a trip to the outlet mall in Jeffersonville to buy socks, maybe some shoes. It has been a long year for my socks, and many of them are past their prime.
Before this year that wouldn’t have been a big thing. But, this year it’s a vacation, this year a trip to the store has, at times, seemed to be almost a vacation. A dark, sinister vacation, risking illness and infection to bring home the bacon, or canned soup, or baseboard adhesive.
We are planning a long weekend at a small cabin. Just my wife and me, a bottle of wine and some steaks sizzling over a charcoal grill. Nothing big, nothing crazy, but something.
I guess that’s the most important thing, there is some optimism. After all the madness, after all the loss, there is still more hope than despair. We can go through a year like we just had and somehow come through, more or less, intact. We’ve changed, and I hope we’ve learned.
In the words of Leo Tolstoy “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.” Indeed.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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