Waiting for the Shot

A Year

It’s March 11^th, 2021.  It was a year ago that we began to understand that our world was closing.  On March 11^th of 2020, I was preparing for Ohio’s role in the Democratic Primary.  I was going to meetings to get ready to officiate in the 2020 track season.  And I was writing a “Viral News” essay on the coronavirus epidemic.  

We went to vote a few days later at the Board of Elections on March 15^th, then went out to lunch.  We ate in a near-empty restaurant, the St. Patrick’s Day decorations looking lonely, and March Madness Basketball already cancelled.  We talked with our server for a while – what she would do, how long before staff was laid off, was she at risk.   That was our last “in-restaurant” meal we had until last week.

We did manage to have an election – in spite of COVID.  Americans voted by mail, and we voted absentee, and more Americans voted than ever before.  Republicans in multiple states are trying to keep that from happening again – when more Americans vote, the Republicans think they lose.  They were right about the Presidency, but did pretty well on the “down-ticket” races.

We didn’t have a track season last year, though they managed to have fall and winter sports thereafter.  I didn’t officiate track, but more importantly for track and for kids, there’s a “hole” in those programs: a year is lost.  There’s a whole class of kids who haven’t been exposed or interested in track.  And for the seniors, there is no recovering it.

Ends and Beginnings

The world “butcher’s bill” of COVID is over 2.6 million lost.  Here in the United States we have almost twenty percent of those deaths, with 560,000 lost in the past year.   We didn’t do it well:  we allowed simple COVID precautions to turn into political issues.  Maybe half of those deaths could have been avoided – but they weren’t.   But, we have performed a scientific miracle.  Vaccines have developed at record pace – Warp Speed  as former President Trump would say.  Today we have three in the United States:  Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson.  In the rest of the world there’s even more, Astra-Zeneca, he Russian “Sputnik” vaccine, the shadowy China vaccine, and even more to come.  

As folks get the vaccine, they begin to feel a freedom to “live” again.  Vaccines won’t make them “bulletproof” to COVID, but they do almost guarantee that the ultimate nightmare won’t happen:  dying unconscious from lack of oxygen on a ventilator in the hospital.  The vaccine opens up the world again, a world lost a year ago.  Folks can see each other, hug each other, and watch each other smile.  And they can do it without the risk of killing the ones they love.

I got my first shot three weeks ago.  A shadow of worry disappeared.  I got my second shot yesterday afternoon.  I’m planning on being sick today, and if so, it’s worth every bit.  But sick or not – Jenn gets her first shot this afternoon, and with that a much greater shadow will disappear for me.  So we won’t be missing that.

Life Alterations

We are making some big changes in our life.  After we both retired, we purchased a camper that we enjoyed.  We even “snow-birded” for a year in 2018, spending the winter in Florida.  But during our COVID self-exile, two more dogs were added to the pack, now totaling four.  Two dogs in the camper was tight, and we never even got the chance to try three.  But four is not possible, not even to transport much less camp or sleep.  So the camper is going on sale.  If we get back to camping, it’s going to be in a “bus” that all six of us can enjoy.

It’s been a long year.  We, and probably most Americans, have lost folks we know to COVID.  If they weren’t very close, we might not even have felt the loss.  Since we were in “COVID exile”, we didn’t have reason to “feel” their absence.  One of the “bad” parts of re-opening life is the holes that are left behind.  As we re-join life we will see those holes and feel the emptiness:  the missing person, the empty chair.

The World Goes On

As a history teacher, I always wondered how people dealt with national loss.  Whether it was settlers facing diphtheria, or Native Americans smallpox, or earlier groups facing bubonic plague.  How did the weight of tragedy not crush their spirit, and their willingness to move on?  In a small way, I guess we know now.  We know that the weight of suffering, of isolation, and the constant shadow of concern, impacts everyone.  And as that weight is lifted, most feel the lightness.  It makes us want to live life again, despite the loss and the suffering. 

It makes us want the world to go on.  And for many, it makes them want to be a part of it.