Vaccine!

The state kept its word.  I got my first dose of vaccine yesterday. Sitting in the vast amphitheater of the Minneapolis Convention Center, I felt a teary upwelling of gratitude, for the scientists and doctors and nurses and truckdrivers who had carried me to this moment. I was one of the lucky ones—selected at random from a pool of some 300,000 seniors--surely there were other in more precarious health? At 63, F. is still waiting.

When I got back home, I was exhausted. Not just from the vaccine, I think, but also from all the weeks and months of battling fear. I secluded myself upstairs, lay down on the floor with a book. My attention kept slipping off the page. Eventually I gave into the undertow of profound fatigue and closed my eyes.

For the first time in almost a year I have a sense of protection, an infusion of efficacy; I’m less terrified of moving about in the world. I can just glimpse a room full of light through a door cracked open.