A dream?
I awoke in a daze my friend, still partially submerged in the subconscious realm, thinking that the nightmare was true, until full consciousness kicked in. Thank God, it was just a dream! Can you imagine?
Everyone was walking around wearing masks and shields. The Sears store became a mass vaccination center! Had to sit there 15 minutes after the shot, with many others, in case the vaccine made any of us stop breathing. There was no choice in the matter, as this contagion, called Covid-19, was killing millions all over the planet. So, you either took your chances with a hastily created vaccine, or lived in fear of catching the Covid and dying an ugly death, and you would eventually. Yeah, not a choice really, unless you had a death wish.
And this vaccine was no one shot deal. You had to go back for a second one, to get more protection, maybe a third one later on, and so on. This invisible Covid was like a demon, it kept changing and mutating, finding new ways to sneak up on us, get at us. Glad it was only a dream!
Reality
Yesterday, I received my first Covid vaccine inside the former Sears department store at the local mall. The process was quick and efficient, and the personnel friendly, but the experience disconcerting. The contrast between my memories of Sears and its present use – mass vaccination center – felt jarring. I’d shopped there for many years, buying socks, underwear, jeans, and exercise equipment. My mother often dragged me through there as a child, picking out new school clothes for me, and doing a bit of browsing for herself – a precious memory of mom. Now however, I struggle to reconcile these memories with yesterday’s surreal experience.
The outside shell of the building looked the same, but the inside was vacated of anything once familiar, other than the original floor tiles. There were no sales clerks or cosmetic associates, but rather vaccinators dressed in scrubs, gloves, and masks, waiting to inject the masses with the life saving Moderna vaccine. All well and good, as they say, and thank God that I finally received my first poke of life saving medicine, but it was like walking through the bizarro world of a nightmare.
There, at the former Sears department store, I was not buying underwear or socks, nor holding my mom’s hand. On this day, at 58 years old, I was a gambler, my life being the thing gambled upon. And like a gambler, I took my educated guess, going with the statistics and probabilities, that a minimally approved vaccine would keep me alive and not kill me with side effects, as opposed to taking my chances with the deadly Covid-19: a gamble that I would more likely lose at some point. A rational decision in my opinion, but not one that I wish to ever face again – a choice between the scary and scarier.
If this were 2018, or Covid-19 had never manifested, then my experience yesterday could have been relegated to the dream category, something to be posted on a dream interpretation board or discussed with friends or a therapist. There were plenty of symbolic elements to work with: a place that held endearing childhood associations with mom; masked men and women – potential contagions – awaiting their vaccination; friendly vaccinators with hypodermic needles; the palpable fear of side effects; and the frustration of incompleteness or unfinished business – needing to return for a second vaccine. Yep, all the elements for a fascinating psychological interpretation. But, this was no dream.
I’ve lived almost six decades of my life within the same five mile radius, taking comfort in the familiar landscape of restaurants, supermarkets, shopping malls, local parks, walking paths, my old college campus, and other places as familiar as family. Never had I imagined the possibility of this comfortable, familiar world transforming into a medical disaster scene, not unlike the 1995 movie “Outbreak,” with Dustin Hoffman. To witness so many of these comfort places converted into vaccine centers, is my personal encounter with modern surrealism, maybe surpassing the artistic creations of Salvador Dalí, at least in realism – the bizarre overlapping the real.
Just seventeen months ago, I thought nothing of taking a long walk around the neighborhood, breathing in the cool autumn air and watching my breaths drift off like chimney smoke. I had no worries of inhaling a life ending virus, nor exhaling one to an innocent passerby. But, my neighborhood is someplace else now, looking somewhat familiar, but yet different. Very different. People wear masks now, hiding their smiles and frowns, but staring, always staring, as if we are strangers in a strange land; enemies by virtue of viral transmission; wary souls looking upon wary souls, walking the walkways in fear, ready to jump away or change direction at a moment’s notice; the six feet rule amplified several times, the walking dead staying away from the walking dead.
Nothing is the same anymore, other than the inside of my apartment. I’ve not changed a thing here. I have the same books, sitting on the same shelves. My Chromebook has not moved an inch. The bedroom fan is facing in the same direction as it did before Covid first appeared on CNN. I sleep on the same couch, resting my head on the same pillows every night, watching the same TV programs over and over. Even my favorite watch, a gift from a friend, remains stuck on 1:53 am, the time the battery ran out in January 2020, several days before everything in my world began changing. It is as if time stopped inside my apartment, while the outside world transformed into something toxic and unfamiliar, as if I slipped into a parallel universe or cannot wake from a perpetual nightmare – one of those nightmares that seem to go on all night.
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 