Hope in a Covid Vaccine

 

Sometimes I cry at strange times that surprise me. Like, I am totally not prepared for the tears that suddenly well up. Where do they even come from?

Today, I joined a line of dozens of other people at the Placer County Fairgrounds Events Center hall, a place where in the summer they set up tables that display people’s best jams and quilts, photographs and ceramics projects.  Maybe animals are shown here, too: the prize winning sheep, hogs, goats.

We queued up politely, patiently waited our turns, and were directed, one by one, to tables where we received our Covid vaccinations. I got my second shot today, a Pfizer one. I qualified for the vaccine on two different fronts: as a massage therapist, I’m a healthcare professional. And since I’ve been substitute teaching, I qualified through that as well.

I sat down at table eight. The entire process took about thirty seconds. The nurse confirmed my name, confirmed that I was getting my second dose of the Pfizer shot (since there were tables where you could get your Moderna vaccine, too). Then said, “Congratulations. Congratulations.”

Well. That did it. Right in the middle of the Events Center hall. There were my tears.

I fought them back, because the Events Center hall in the middle of a vaccine clinic does not seem like the best place for a crying episode, and told her thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for helping us. Thank you for being someone who cares,.

I was overcome with gratitude for her, for all the healthcare professionals who have risked their lives this past year to care for Covid patients. I was grateful to be there in that room, surrounded by so many, all of us fortunate enough to be getting our vaccines today. I was grateful for the scientists who developed the vaccine, for the companies who produced it, for our government (and Dolly Parton) who helped fund it.

Today, a weight dropped off of me that I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying.

Because, really, hasn’t this been a stressful year?

Most of us have had to go out and live life, at least a little, without knowing if this day would be the one where we would somehow contract the Covid. Would it be this trip to the market where I would be exposed, the moment when I picked up an eggplant that someone else had touched? Or when I pushed open the door of  the building where I do massage and got some germs on my hand? Maybe it would be the day when I worked with clients who weren’t comfortable wearing masks? Or the time I filled up my car at the gas station and touched my phone before I sanitized my hands, and then touched my face, thinking I was safe, but my phone was speckled with Covid and I never thought to clean it?

Any one of those times could have been the time I contracted Covid.

Millions of people did.

Millions of people who were “essential workers,” who had to keep working at  grocery stores and poultry processing plants, while I was forced to stay home for months, was told not to work.

Half a million have died, just here in our country.  Many of them would still be alive today, had it not been for this pandemic. Millions more are suffering from long-term effects after “recovering” from Covid, and are dealing with exhaustion and pain that they never would have had, that they shouldn’t have to bear.  It is immeasurable, the pain that this thing has caused. The losses are incalculable. The grief unbearable.

Maybe it was that realization that caused my tears. And maybe it was also tears of gratitude that I was able to get my second shot today, and that I was not alone there, but was surrounded  by many others: young and old, some seemingly strong, others visibly frail. As we all took our seats after our shots, and waited the required fifteen minutes in a hundred chairs spaced at least six feet apart, to make sure we didn’t have an allergic reaction, it felt like we were coming out of this bad dream together. Like hope had made its way into the Events Center hall, and had taken a chair there with us, and had decided she was going to stay awhile.  I was so glad to see her. It was a really rough year.