I almost cried

I almost cried. I didn’t. You know the moment. That moment you feel the tears coming to your eyes but then it stops.

It was the moment the confirmation appeared on my computer. The confirmation I was officially scheduled for my vaccine appointment.

I didn’t think it would happen this soon. Just the previous week I was complaining, yelling if you can do that in an email, to my daughter about what a mess the state of Iowa was. That I was living in the state ranked as one of the five worst for getting people vaccinated. That I had absolutely no clue when I would even have hope of maybe getting the vaccine, much less actually getting it.

The cause for my anger at this moment was her planned return trip home in June from California where she lives. The trip that would be the first I had seen her since Christmas of 2019, 18 months ago.

The trip home to plan her wedding next year. The wedding she was putting off until 2022 in part to, hopefully, avoid covid requirements for masks and distancing.

Now she was asking if she should make the trip back. If I didn’t have the vaccine by then would it be safe for her and fiancée to fly back and possibly expose me to a virus they pick up along the way?

It was the moment all of those anxieties many of us have felt this past year came to the surface. Those anxieties and frustrations of being closed off from society and the world, that generally speaking we didn’t even recognize are inside us.

I absolutely realized it at that moment and all those frustrations came boiling out in an instant. Politics, because of politics, are you kidding me politics, just get over it politics, none of us had a clue when we would get the vaccine that would allow us to see our loved ones again, to plan our daughters’ weddings.

But then, almost as if a gift from above, new orders were released allowing those with underlying conditions to get the vaccine. To my total surprise I have one of those underlying conditions. Never have I been so happy to have an underlying condition. Probably the only time in my life I will be happy I have an underlying condition. Thank goodness for underlying conditions.

And there it was on my computer, the confirmation of my vaccine appointment. The confirmation that makes it possible for my daughter to come home.

I almost cried.

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NOTE: The same week I received my first vaccine I noticed a bud on my amaryllis plant. I received the plant 12 years ago and it bloomed beautifully that Christmas, and never bloomed again. I’d tried all the many things you’re supposed to do but no matter what I tried it never bloomed. I finally gave up on it and simply left it on the dining table, content that it was living and growing its shoots but never even trying to bloom. Until the week I received my first vaccine.