A World Turned Upside Down: This Is What Hope Looks Like

 

The folder next to my head is appropriately named.

I sat down this morning to write about the latest pandemic development and realized I had no picture to go with the post. Rather than take a selfie of my current post-workout self I stuck my celebratory sticker right next to a face on my monitor's screensaver. It seems appropriate that the picture is part of a family portrait taken in a moment when I was happy clear down to my bones, just as I was 10 days ago when a nurse jabbed my left arm.

I got my Covid-19 vaccine. 

As it turns out, it is possible to put a timeline on hope, and my clock started ticking at 10:17 a.m. Wednesday, February 10. That's when I masked up and left the house to line up with teachers, aides, and staff in the school district where I accompany the middle school choir. Three weeks from that moment I will get the second shot, then I will wait another two weeks before I begin to cautiously emerge from isolation. 

That second shot will come exactly one year after Baby Wonderful was born, the day we were able to hold and cuddle our hours-old dear one. The next day, as we were on the road back to the House on the Corner, the president addressed the nation concerning a crisis that already was spreading. In the hazy Is-This-True-or-Not world of a year ago, it was hard know how seriously to take his announcement, but then we heard that March Madness had been cancelled.

I turned to Husband: "This could be really bad." 

It has been.

It hasn't just been the constant, low-level worry about whether my children, my father, my beloved siblings and their families, were still healthy. It's also been actively avoiding other people when my Before way of life was built around being with other people. 

Picking up groceries rather than doing my own shopping. Moving my women's group and Bible study meetings to Zoom. Not eating in a restaurant during this entire year. Going back to work at the piano for a few months but realizing that the worry a child would unwittingly infect me was too draining, and taking a leave from that job. Attending church remotely, even after the church re-opened. Teaching piano via Google Meet. Not singing Christmas carols.

Getting to know my grandson by FaceTime and hoping he would recognize my voice when I finally hold him again.

This was not the way I had planned to be a grandmother. 

But then, last night Boy#1 texted us with a question: "Hey, when are you all supposed to get your second Covid shots? We're planning for Baby Wonderful's birthday party." 

We've reached the point where we can begin planning, albeit cautiously, and knowing this gathering is even a possibility is such a hopeful sign. 

Don't think that after a year in which Husband was literally the only other human being I saw for weeks at a time we will immediately go back to our Before behaviors. We'll continue to mask and distance and we'll limit our contacts to friends and family we know are similarly cautious and vaccinated. We'll avoid crowds and handshakes, and it may be years before I am not angry with non-maskers whose disdain for science and disregard of others has been so cavalier. (Your excuses are meeting my upraised open palm.)

The end of this is not even on the horizon yet, but we are vaccinated. 

We have hope.