We went fully armed, my sisters and I. Libby drove her trusty white steed, with all of us aboard, over to the Legacy Events Center, where they normally held rodeos and the county fair. That was before the world shut down.
Earlier that week my friend and fellow Relief Society leader, Erin Ashby, had called and suggested we check with the senior women in our church congregation to see if they needed any help registering for the Covid 19 vaccine. It was an inspired suggestion, and we hopped right on it, calling about 50 women in our ward, a number of whom have disabilities or live alone. I had called the county health department numerous times, trying to work out a way to register and accommodate our eligible people receiving the vaccine. In the process I found that every single person I spoke with in the Davis County Health Department, all of them women, by chance, was not only capable and willing, they were also kind, compassionate, and determined to help us as we helped our neighbors. One worker, the person overseeing senior citizens in the health department, was especially informed and diligent. She suggested we come at the end of the day and meet her at the vaccination site.
And so we did. Ann Marie had baked a dozen loaves of bread. I had mashed raspberries into freezer jam. We took what we had to share with the workers and volunteers. What we saw was beautiful.
Because Kristy was busy with work matters, we waited in the stands, just the four of us. We sat there, four perfectly flabby aging women, bundled in our winter coats, one seat apart from each other in the otherwise empty rodeo stands. We sat in echoey silence and watched. Down there, where horses typically twisted and turned and rodeo clowns rolled into plastic barrels, there was instead a meticulously choreographed dance of love. Serious love. The kind of love that fits all mankind, regardless of station or creed or any other divisive factor. From a silent, metal thread of automobiles that strung along the fence line all the way out across the soccer fields, back by the jail and the courthouse and the DMV, cars entered the massive building in complete cooperation. Led by volunteers, who didn’t even have to speak, just motion with their long red flashlights, each vehicle pulled into an area, two cars deep, where medical personnel waited. I’m guessing they were able to service about forty vehicles at a time. Masked drivers rolled down their windows, then passengers, and one by one sharp and silent needles delivered saving juices to the bodies of our sacred and honored generation. We sat there, moved to tears, inhaling the relative silence that hovered over all these good works. I recognized the sacred irony of it, all these people who had come together to save the bodies of a generation of souls, and it felt almost not human, but wholly spiritual and divine.
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| Everyone waited patiently in line. |
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| The order, fluidity, and cooperation were awesome. |
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| No-one even had to get out of their car. |
Eventually Kristy came to meet us. When she did, she told us they had six vaccines left over. Each vial has enough material to vaccinate a certain number of people, and once a vial has been opened it has to be used or lost. So, at the end of the day, they were willing to take any arm. Davis County has not wasted one single vaccine since this started in early January. As I mentioned, my sisters and I were fully armed. They were flabby, fleshy arms, but they were willing. I asked Kristy if she wanted me to call people in our church who I knew were at risk, and she said yes. So our neighbors and fellow worshipers, one with a heart condition and one with asthma, drove at lightening speed to get there and also received the vaccine.
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| Nurse Tina arms my sister Ann Marie with life-saving weaponry. |
Moderna. That’s what it was called. It sounds like it could flow from the mouth of a priest. It went it smoothly and quietly and, except for Libby, who had an allergic reaction to it, we all took it fine. Even Lib, all swollen and filled with Epinephrine that they injected with her reaction, was grateful to have it.
We delivered Ann Marie’s fresh baked bread and raspberry freezer jam, thanked them, and drove home with our little cards of evidence. I imagined my blood accepting that fluid. I imagined tiny cells flowing like those various cars at the Legacy Center, the host blood cells looking over their shoulders as they swam through my veins, nodding a welcome to the newbies that would serve to protect me from a deadly virus. I gave my body permission to integrate everything in my bloodstream.
I found out later that there is poly glycol in the vaccine. I am deathly allergic to poly glycol. I don’t know why I had literally no allergic reaction to this shot. I don’t want to think I deserve, any more than anyone else, some sort of divine intervention. But it kinda feels like it. That’s another story for another time.
Right now, I am celebrating with the rest of humankind, that scientists have worked around the clock to find a way to mitigate this disease, faster than ever has been done before. And I am grateful that my arm received it, one month ago, and then again, today.
God bless us, every one.
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| Crises are good for humankind. We unite when we face a common enemy. |
