"Since Feeling Is First"
photo credit: cbs19news.com
Hooray! Round one for Pfizer and me, all set for our first date at 9:56 AM. Though the invitation arrived only the night before, I’d long looked forward to it. On my way now, car music blaring, sun glimmering on a cold morning.
Who knew that the vaccine would play so hard to get?
The vast parking lot, once serving long-abandoned businesses, bursts at its seams with circling cars and wandering pedestrians. I find a place to park on the outskirts, wedging into a skinny spot. After several friendly meet and greets, I grasp that the throng that I passed upon entering the lot, a spaced line weaving around the front of the buildings and wrapping along its side, is the line for the vaccine. Securing my place at the end, I focus on the distant makeshift tent sheltering nurses with their precious vials. My date will be very late to pick me up.
“Waiting is the hardest part,” Tom Petty’s song comes to mind—accompanied by his aptly-named band, the Heartbreakers. The sun shines down on cold concrete as we masked waiters settle in, exchanging muffled greetings and polite nods. Upbeat volunteers offer encouragement, explaining that a computer glitch caused this one-time, massive signup. After a half hour, the line inches forward, barely. My feet moving, glasses fogging, and heart gladdening, I catch the beat—the morning’s rhythm rustles though me. Slowly, surely, and unmistakably, strangers morph into community.
Together, woven into a ragtag assembly, our eyes meet naturally and hold.
Such sweet bedlam engulfs me for almost five hours. Not one raised voice, not even one—those leaving the tent and unable to get the vaccine nevertheless calmly detail the snafu and proudly show off their new appointment cards. No complaint, not one, from those in wheelchairs or dressed in shirtsleeves. No questions, no anger, nary a whine—lots of laughter, especially comparing long-gone appointment times, and sparkling eyes. Step by tiny step, the one endless line now splits into three—first vaccine over here, second vaccine over there, church buses unloading here and there.
Lost in thought, my feet tapping the notes of favorite songs, I distinctly hear the sound of treasured words that are repeated louder the second time around. The phrase “wholly to be a fool / while Spring is in the world” rings out again. Reluctant to look around me, so close to the tent and fearing any detour, suddenly I behold the determined poet. Stomping into view six-feet away, she belts out the verses, eyes dancing above her festive mask. “It’s Linda!” she exclaims, quickly pulling her mask down and immediately back up. “Hey! don’t you remember you always recited it on the first day of class? C’mon! You knew it by heart. Hey! students can memorize poems, too!” (e e cummings, “since feeling is first,” Selected Poems, no. 28.) And off she veers, swept away into the lineup for second shots. I stand statue-still, mesmerized and incredulous, feeling fully vaccinated.
Exiting the tent after the shot and requisite fifteen-minute wait, I walk past the line of newcomers as it lengthens even further around the vacant buildings.
Days pass. Everything softens and thaws—body, mind, heart.
I hadn’t read anything about the uplifting, life-changing side effects of the vaccination. What happened to us on that chilly morning as we bounced up and down on cracked asphalt? Like a bear coming out of hibernation, I mixed in a crowd for the first time in a year. Spectacular! An old verse springs to mind: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews, 13:2). Angels gave up their places in line to push those in wheelchairs. A member of the National Guard escorted individuals from the tented waiting area to their nurse’s station, each time exuding good will and cheer. Angel volunteers wiped chair seats and backs in the post-vaccine area—their merry positivity matched that of the volunteers at the ever-beginning of the line.
More days pass. I welcome the stirrings of emotional freedom and revel in periods of mental relaxation. The future opens its arms. The belief that “sympathy is a very powerful principle in human nature” reverberates through the years from 18th century Scotland. Certainly, sympathy was the undeniable vibration synchronizing us on a cold February day: “As in strings equally wound up, the motion of one communicates itself to the rest, so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature” (David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature).
Vaccine day one leaves me drenched in gratitude. Soaked in hope. Tipsied from inhaling a fresh start.
Is this how it will be from now on? Is this who we are? Is this just the beginning?
A poem (in addition to the one performed in the parking lot) and two songs warmed my first vaccine experience. Listen with me. Emily Dickinson assures us that “I’ve heard it in the chillest land,” oh yes, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.” Two pals in the know, Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers celebrate “Bluebirds singin’ a song / Nothin’ but blue skies from now on.” Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble echo cummings’s conviction that feeling is first for sure. Let’s join these jovial musicians, freely giving away “Heart and soul, the way a fool would do / madly.”
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
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