Quarantine Diary #324 Thoughts on Getting the Vaccine

This week I received a Covid vaccine. Last week Len and I received emails from Froedtert that they were making vaccination appointments for people already registered in their system who are over 65. I’ve never been so glad to be so old. We signed up, I got the shot (Pfizer) this week, Len gets his tomorrow.

After we made the appointments we called our daughter to offer to watch our grandkids overnight in March. She and her husband will also both be vaccinated by March; they are in professions that are getting access in Illinois.

Boy, that conversation was funny.

Me: “Maybe you guys would like to think about going out to dinner in the city and then stay overnight in a downtown hotel?”

Daughter, laughing so hard I think she was about to weep. “Yeah, I think we would like to think about that.”

It’s been a long year.

Len and I have been careful humans and we’ve reminded ourselves nearly every day that we are lucky. We’re have what we need to be secure and we live where it’s easy to walk, bike, and hike and heck, we like each other. We FaceTime read to our granddaughter and learned how to pull off a rousing game of Facetime peekaboo with our toddling grandson. We talk with our kids often; we’ve gotten together a few memorable times outside. I’m never going to forget our “Christmas presents exchange picnic” in a sleety backyard on a 20-degree day.

But it is AMAZING to think about being able to GO OUT and DO THINGS!

I think this is the thing they call hope. It definitely has wings and even though I rarely dance on the outside, my spirit keeps doing a soft shoe routine.

Of course, we will keep wearing masks but soon we can go places! I can read Charlotte’s Web to the 3rd graders in their classroom and then stay the afternoon to listen to kids read to me. We can visit our children! Our granddaughter wants us to bring her mommy’s doll tea set to her and boy, I’m ready for a tea party like none other. Do our own grocery shopping instead of ordering and picking up? Yes! We can go to the stores we have missed with all our hearts. Goodwill and Lowe’s and maybe even Target to peruse the endcaps? Eating in, OMG, a restaurant? Car trips. Hanging out with friends?

After I received the shot they asked me to sit a few minutes to make sure I wouldn’t have an immediate reaction. While I sat I tweeted that my vaccination was my Thanksgiving, my Christmas, and my Happy New Year.

A twitter friend tweeted back, “This is the Rollout of Hope.”

…

Not often, but often enough to surprise us, life exceeds our imagination and what’s coming is better than what’s routine. Like when there was a big stuffed pink poodle toy under the Christmas tree for me. Or reading Little Women in 5th grade and realizing some girls grow up to be writers. The afternoon when I was still a teenager, sitting on a high hill, I watched a thunderstorm roll in from the west. I understood how amazing it was to see the sky filled with electricity and feel the sheeting rain that drenched my dog and me. Being alive was so much bigger than I had expected.

The night my brother came home from Vietnam. The first time I was published. When our babies were born. When Kathleen asked if I would like to be on the MayaWorks board.

Do you know what I mean?

It is a survival skill to pull together the resources one needs to live the life they have.

But then, sometimes, the curtains go up for a bit and we see how big life is and how rich we are.

I had one of those moments this week.

Do you know what I mean?