It was a red-letter day yesterday!
Yesterday morning, I went to the first work meeting I've been to in nearly a year where no one had to wear a mask or stay six feet apart--and this was at an inservice meeting for all the seminary and institute faculties in the valley, so we had a couple dozen people there.
Our employer has now stated that, in areas where the Covid vaccines have been made available to faculty and staff (and regardless of whether or not all employees have actually had the vaccine), we no longer have to mask up and physically distance in each others' company. When we're working with students, we do still have to mask up, per state policy, but we no longer have to do that around other employees.
This is a vast improvement. It was so nice to see each others' faces and to clearly hear the region director speak because he wasn't muffled by a mask. There was a lot of laughter and happiness.
I had been wondering how hard it would be for us to get used to being so close to each other again. Would we be hesitant? Feel residual guilt or fear? Turns out we got used to it pretty quickly. After the first few minutes, we all forget we'd ever been wearing masks and staying away from each other. I even got a hug from Denise, whom I haven't seen in weeks, and Jenie and I whispered quietly to each other on the back row, where we leaned close enough to hear each other. It felt completely natural by that point, as if we had never suffered through masks and social distancing for the last year.
Most of my colleagues have been vaccinated or have had Covid, or both. They jumped at the chance to be vaccinated as soon as they were offered the opportunity, though my employer did not poll who had and who had not taken the vaccine (and they have promised that they won't poll the employees about that in the future, either). My entire faculty have been vaccinated (and all of them suffered side effects ranging from mild and annoying to quite severe, though they have all fully recovered now), and I'm sure that most of the faculty and staff from the other seminaries and institutes in the valley have been vaccinated as well. I'm one of the very few holdouts, I think.
My parents waited for and got the Johnson&Johnson one-dose vaccine, and it took them about a week to fully recover, although their reactions were not severe--mostly general malaise, but no bad fevers or chills. My mother, who is a praying woman, felt very strongly that she and my dad needed to wait for that particular vaccine to be available. I, myself, who am also a praying woman, have felt very strongly that I need to continue waiting. I don't know why, but that's what I'll do unless the Spirit tells me otherwise.
By next week, anyone in our state who is 16 and over will be eligible to receive the vaccine, so I imagine the numbers of vaccinated will grow by leaps and bounds. Dare I hope that by the next school year none of us will be wearing masks? I might finally be able to start really learning the students' names because I can finally see their faces.
