Occasionally when I travel, something happens that leaves an indelible groove in my memory. I’m talking about an experience that haunts me, oddly surfacing to remind me of the quality of my life, like a sharp slap on the cheek. While walking down a narrow, thousand year old street with men sweeping cow dung and people starting to set up their commerce, a woman was sleeping in a bordering ditch with two small children nestled into her armpits, all their beautiful faces laying upward. I wanted to kneel down and swat the flies buzzing in the corner of the youngest’s eye. I wanted to lay a soft blanket over them for comfort and privacy and to keep the flies and morning sun off of them. I wanted to cry. I frequently saw vivid examples of poverty during this particular trip, but the vision of this woman and her children burrowed into my memory like a tick going in deep, sucking a little something out of me. I could have been that woman.
How is it that I was born in United States where a vaccine has been created and disseminated in close to one year? I know. There are problems, you say. It wasn’t that easy, you say. There aren’t enough. There are too many. People can’t get appointments. People are having reactions. Dr Fauci is brilliant. Dr. Fauci is a farce. Yes, there are problems, but I’m not laying in a ditch overnight clutching my children.
I remember the exact moment when I realized a vaccine was going to be the only thing to resolve the horrible situation of rising deaths each day. It felt surreal and impossible. How in the world will someone be able to figure this out? I felt heavily loaded down with fear for my people and all peoples. And then the memory: How was the woman in Varanasi sleeping in a ditch going to get a vaccine?
It feels odd to be on the other side of the vaccine now. I feel weepy thinking about the significance of my second shot. My nightmare is over, but there are many whose nightmare is far from over as they struggle to put back the pieces, losing a loved one or their sources of income, or both. I understand that I am a lucky one, for reasons I can’t know. I could have been born into circumstances that I’ve seen around the world. I could have been that woman and her two children without even a blanket. I pray they are okay.