Everything has been terrible -- and that deepens the moment of getting vaccinated

Four-point-six million people got vaccinated last Saturday in the United States. Forever, I will want to hear about you getting vaccinated: family, friends, total strangers, friends of strangers, those emergency nurses and doctors back in December and January, elderly musicians, someone’s beloved aunt. Let’s hear it. Imagine Pac-Man with the dots, but he’s chasing vaccine photos, and the decisive moment when someone’s life returns to them. Imagine little Super Mario chimes popping off every second across the entire United States — like that ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching — like one of those maps where all the lights ping on, like old some telephone or airline ad where every city and town lights up. Sometimes it’s like I can’t even believe the pandemic has happened. And nothing comparatively bad has even happened to me during this time, except that I have been alive during the pandemic, which has transformed life into an abyss and infused society with an unbearable, sprawling grief that will snake far beyond it. So here we arrive at this instant, mundane act of receiving a shot in the face of the grim past and present. But it’s way more than that, obviously. In ten seconds, it’s the intersection of something deep in your heart that only you can know, with the literal interior transformation of developing protections against the virus, with the true interconnected nature of society — because we’re all really just little Lego pieces clicking into place in a giant fence around the virus.