It felt very strange to be in group 1a, lumped with medical workers when I compared myself to those I deem to be essentially essential. I hadn?t seen a client face-to-face since the initial lockdown, and yet the strong encouragement to therapists in January was ?Shots in arms! Shots in arms! Get an appointment because shots may go to waste!? And so, I made my way to the fairgrounds, a mix of gratitude and guilt, wishing it were my parents going first, or my teacher friends, or my daughter who has disabilities. It was yet another experience of walking in my privilege, hoping for overall freedom to unfold.
Being vaccinated now feels a little like being a secret superhero, prohibited from using her powers until everyone is a superhero. That seems fitting, really. We cannot live into our superpowers alone this time. We privileged ones who got vaccinated in the early groups must wait and realize that we do not move forward until we ALL move forward. Freedom will come when the vaccine is administered to all who will receive it, and we pray it will be enough of the population to bring us to safety. So much about this pandemic has been a group effort.
The place I got my shot was massive and unbelievably well organized. They were set up for hundreds more to be in line than were there when I came for my appointment, but the seamless process awed me. The number of workers there made me wonder at the cost and organization of this effort. So many people spending entire workdays making this machine work. How many?
I remember going to BWI, our local airport, last July as we made our annual trek to vacation in my husband?s part of the world, braving the risk for the sake of some sense of respite and normalcy. All the parking lots but one were closed. Entire sections of the airport were partitioned off, empty with chained gates over the storefronts. So many employees not working! An airport so busy every parking lot occasionally completely fills around the holidays, now functioning at what? 10% capacity? So many people displaced as I went on working, my life relatively unchanged. Guilt and gratitude, side by side.
I wept that day in the airport as I wept in the fairgrounds, waiting for my shot. I was having an experience I knew I would remember forever, yet would wind up being a story like nearly everyone will have and that will go into our collective memory of this time. Now I wait, like so many of us, for everyone to become a superhero. Together is the only way forward.