Scars, Codes, Vaccines

 

It was August. I was six and so excited. We were in Dr. Halligan's office. He was a leprechaun of a man and he was about to give me my small pox vaccine so I could start first grade.

It was the last step to my becoming a big school girl. I already had five new outfits, one for each day of the week. I would learn to read. I'd heard that they would have new crayons for me, one for every color of the rainbow and a brown, a black. A friend, who'd started first grade the year before told me that mid morning we would have a bottle of milk and two cookies. I wasn't as thrilled about the milk as I was about the cookies.

To celebrate that night, my mother drove me and my grandmother to Lawrence to look at the damn. I have no idea why, but the water rushing thrilled me and I used to love watching it. The damn was a sometimes goal of a Sunday drive and if I were lucky, it would include an ice cream. This would be a special trip.

I didn't know what small pox was except if I got it, I would have terrible scars instead of the just one I would wear on my arm the rest of my life, a badge of safety. Without it, I couldn't go to school.

I feel the same happiness over my QR code to show I've had my two Moderna shots against Covid. The Swiss government had sent it to my phone automatically. It was my pass to liberty.

For over a year life had been marked by attestations to be filled out each time I left the house, two quarantine bouts, no movies, restaurants, limited shop access. I missed the two-cheek, three-cheek kisses of friends, and even more I missed the hugs, the coffees in cafés, the restaurant meals, the get togethers. There were so many summer friends from England, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland that had not been seen for over a year because of travel bans. They have begun reappearing thanks to the codes.

Pre-code a few local friends and I had worked out buying take away coffee and going to the next to the church to sit far apart on one of the benches near the fountain for our allotted half hour of freedom.

It had been harder hearing of friends who died and others who were fighting to live.

Now I had a code that showed when I entered a store, a restaurant, a theater everyone else in there was not a danger to my health. It showed, too, I wasn't endangering anyone. We shared a responsibility to one another. Do whatever possible to end the pandemic.

The shops and restaurants that had been shut, could now resume business. The French and Swiss governments may have given them money to sustain their basic needs, but it was a year out of their financial lives. I care about Elisabeth, Arnaud, Stephanie, Philippe, Natalie, Joseph, Rosella and all the other merchants I see regularly.

Those who earned their living by marchés could once again set up their stalls on Saturdays and Wednesdays. We didn't need to flash our codes at them but I would have had they asked. How wonderful to chat with the people selling the sausages, the olives, the fresh veggies.

The movie theater is 76 steps from our front door. What a treat to watch Nomadland in VO (version original) and a second film in French. I see the Cannes winners being shown and I can pick and choose what I want to see all thanks to the code. I know the other people sitting in the red fake-velvet seats are no danger to me or me to them. 

This is truly freedom.