Notice: Next Thursday  April 1, on the first day of National Poetry Month, I will be interviewed, along with Ashland poet Kim Hamilton and Rebel Heart Books owner, Eileen Bobeck, on Jefferson Public Radio, 9:00-10:00am (rebroadcast 9:00-10:00 in the evening).

    You can listen live on a JPR station or on the website (jeffexchange.org) and can participate by calling 800-838-3670 or emailing JX@jeffnet.org. The interview will be posted on the website within a day. But I hope you'll listen live. It's more fun.

    When I received my first vaccination, last week, I was so excited I wanted to shout the news from the rooftops. We're going to end this thing! I've taken one of the millions of steps, two from each of us, it's going to take to end the pandemic, but we'll get there. As with so many things, with all of us working together, we'll beat this virus.

    However, I quickly discovered that not everyone is excited about vaccinations. Some people are foregoing the opportunity, a decision that baffles me because do they like wearing masks? Do they like our social isolation and a stalled economy? Of course not, but that's what a choice not to vaccinate comes down to. The person not getting vaccinated either doesn't care if the pandemic continues or is saying, "I think the vaccines were developed too fast [or gives another reason] and in spite of what Fauci and the CDC say, I think they're too risky. I'm not going to get vaccinated. But you do it because if you do, we'll get over the pandemic." 

    In other words that person is saying, "You take the risk [if there is any] so I don't have to" because he, like all of us, would like the pandemic to end. Maybe his life is more important than mine or other people's who have taken or will take the vaccine, and certainly to him it is, but in the big picture, I think we're pretty much equal, all of us. 

    Of course, no one is going to force anyone to get the shot. It's your choice. But America's strong concept of individual freedom has preempted a sense of the common good. If we are going to pull ourselves out of the pandemic, it'll take a sense of responsibility from all of us to do what we can. And the most important thing we can do, in addition to wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and keeping six feet apart, is get vaccinated, not just to protect our individual selves but to keep the coronavirus from finding a foothold among us. The vaccination of me alone will do no good at all in stopping the pandemic. It takes a combined effort. 

    Some time last spring or summer (the pandemic months run together) I heard an interview on the radio with a young woman, in her forties, I think, who had volunteered for COVID trials and experiments. Of course, she was taking an enormous risk, but she had taken a look at her life (single, no kids or grandkids, ordinary job) and decided that it wasn't so important that she couldn't give it, if necessary, to help us understand and overcome the coronavirus. Even though I am much older than she, with much more of my life behind me, I couldn't have done what she did. But I can get vaccinated. Being vaccinated inoculates me against getting sick, for which I am profoundly grateful, but I'm also grateful to the millions of other people who, like me, got vaccinated as much for the common good as for our individual protection.

The First Thing I Will Do after We All Get Vaccinated

     The first thing I will do is get a haircut.

    The next thing I will do is sit for an hour in my favorite coffee shop with a book and a cup of coffee and partly read and partly watch the two women chatting at the adjacent table and the checkers players across the room and the Bible study group and the student with her books and love every minute of discreet comradeship.

    The next thing I will do is have dinner with friends at a restaurant, where someone else will do the cooking and the place is noisy with laughter and clamor from young people on dates and families eating out together and an elderly couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary and all the waitpeople, unmasked, walking freely between tables, pouring wine with broad smiles, bringing steaming plates of delicious food made by the happy chef in the busy kitchen.

    Then I will get on a train for eight hours and go visit my granddaughter, and I will talk happily with the seat mate I would previously have ignored so I could read my book because although I could read my book any time during the pandemic, to have a seat mate to relate to is a treat.

    I will say to everyone I see—the conductor on the train, the waitperson at the restaurant, the barista at the coffee shop, the hairdresser, everyone I pass on the street—"What a beautiful smile you have."

    I will say, "How nice it is to see your face."

    The next thing I will do is take a big plastic bag and pick up every piece of trash that has been collecting at the side of the road for a year, but maybe before I do that, I'll get a two-hour massage and let the trash sit for just another day.

    I will go to a concert and then to a play and then to a Fourth-of-July parade, sitting cheek by jowl with open-faced strangers, and I will smile radiantly at them as we enjoy together our common pleasures.

    I will have a grand party at my house, and everyone will eat great food and drink and talk freely without the muffle of masks, and I will hug everyone who comes in the door and again each person who leaves and probably do a lot of hugging in between, too.

    Then I will get on an airplane and go somewhere just for the experience of being on an airplane.

    I will hang my mask on a hook in the closet. I thought about burning it, but it is a symbol of our common suffering and our combined efforts to overcome this adversity, and I think I'll keep it.

    I will never do another Zoom meeting.

    

Vaccination Trials

    I was eligible on February 9 for a coronavirus vaccination. I was counting the days, and on that morning, I started calling places that gave vaccinations, naively thinking I would make an appointment for the next day.

    Friends and family in other states were already beginning to be vaccinated, many of them younger than I, but I was patient with Oregon's decisions. I supported their prioritization of teachers over the elderly. I am not an essential worker, not do I live in a nursing home or have to be in public places often. I recognized that I had a place in line and that my turn would come.

    On February 9, I thought my turn had come, but as I went down the list—Asante hospital, Jackson County Health Department, Bi-Mart pharmacy, Fred Meyer, Safeway—I got the same message: All appointments are booked. Period.

    My doctor's office suggested I call Asante instead of trying to book online. When I did, I got a recorded message that I had to be eligible before making an appointment, and I was, so I waited on hold until I was cut off. I called again and was cut off again.

    I was told from several people to go through Asante's app called Mychart, but when I tried to get an account on Mychart, I was told I needed a verification number, which, of course, I didn't have. Another dead end.

    Meanwhile, people were making other suggestions: Try this place and that one. None had appointments available. Some people had simply waited at the fairgrounds when mass inoculations were being given, but the county wasn't doing that any more. One had lied about her circumstances, but, really, there were reasons for prioritization and, in the end, anyone who wants a vaccination is going to get one. It's not worth lying about. 

    When I called my doctor's office again, she gave me a different number to call for Asante, where, she said, I could get a verification number for Mychart. In fact, that's what happened, and, in fact, Mychart worked, and I now have an appointment for a vaccination. It's more than a month away, but I am secured with an appointment. 

    It's really mostly the psychological impact that matters for the long wait. Friends and family who have already been vaccinated have all reported the same response: the immense relief, the opening of possibilities, the sense of a return to unfettered life. I can hardly wait. And even though I had a frustrating experience getting an appointment, I am proud of Oregon's response to the coronavirus crisis and its handling of vaccinations. Oregon ranks 11th in the list of states of efficient roll-out. April 23, my vaccination date, is just around the corner. I have an appointment. I will be vaccinated. And the pandemic will come to an end.