Hurry Up and Wait Til Christmas

Dulled. Too many indoor days. Too much coffee. Exhausted and anxious. Accommodations of living alone. Afraid to leave. I had my parking space back.The one that I shoveled. Shoveled it on Thursday. Lost it on Saturday. Got it back on Monday. If I go out I might lose it again. It was Tuesday and the snow was starting to melt. Christmas Eve is Thursday. Slowly accepting it. I needed to get the mixed nuts, specifically the Extra Nutty Mix from the gourmet nut shop. An annual purchase. They go along as a gift for mom with the kitchen calendar for the new year. The nut shop near the train stop along my old commute closed during the Shut Down. I'd have to drive to the other one. Squeezed myself in between the snowbank and the car door. Started the cold car and left my space. Driving by the store, I notice a line out the door and down the street. We're all in this together. I had found a quarter in my car. Not enough change for the parking meter with the wait. Unfazed, I sped by the store until there wasn't any traffic. Took a turn and drove until there wasn’t a car within close distance. Parked and walked. A cold day with a warm sun. Snowbanks standing tall but with steady streams flowing beneath them. Water dripping off store front awnings. A gutter spout that looked like a National Geographic cover - elaborate icicles with water spilling all over. If my dad was here he'd say that old saying "hurry up and wait" I thought as I found myself entering the end of the line. "Is this for the nuts?" I asked the older guy 6 feet in front of me. "I hope so" he said. His mask was fogging up his glasses too. Naturally, we talked about the weather. How long will we have to wait in this sunshine I wondered out loud. 22 minutes he predicted. That's what he had left on his parking meter he said as he checked the time. He then told me that the longer wait would be until 2022. He referenced some previous pandemics and vaccines. He sited the Spanish Flu and and some others that I didn't know. He's been down this road before, he told me as the line of people grew behind us. He had worked for MIT. Building factories that manufactured vaccines. He looked the part. Corduroys and an Indiana Jones style fedora. "Wait, you built the factory or the vaccine?" "Somewhere in the middle" He told me. He was hard to understand. The mask muffling his voice, the science I couldn't grasp and my natural skepticism that goes along with talking to strangers in a nut line. He was all over the place. Or, maybe It was me. I was doing my best to follow his science. He was talking about fat, lipids, micro-carriers, MRNA and other words and terms that never stuck with me. Trying to keep up and not look too dumb I asked a question about manufacturing the vaccine. He told me it could actually all be made in a lab the size of a small restaurant's kitchen. "I had no idea" I said. "That's what they're not telling you" he said, like he was sharing classified information or a secret recipe. He kept talking but I drifted. All of those empty restaurants. All of those clean and ready kitchens. All of those hungry people. "Impressive" I said when he mentioned some of his successful scientific accomplishments that were lost on me. "Just lucky" he responded like a teacher excited on the first day of school. I responded with that old saying “better to be lucky than good” thinking we could all use a little luck. As the line moved closer to the store he pointed out his car. Someone had just parked in front him. They had squeezed their car into a space that wasn't a real space and accidentally fed his parking meter. He was gifted some extra time. He was on a roll. The uniformed parking meter officer was walking down the street along the parked cars with the hand held ticket printing machine. Everyone properly lined up on the sidewalk. Masked and distanced. Watching his every step. No one could use a ticket. We're all in this together. I was relieved my car was safely hidden. In the store, the MIT vaccine factory maker and I both got the same nut mix. I tried my best to say goodbye. He wasn't done yet and I left. Not sure if he heard me. But, it was ok. We made it through one waiting phase. I got home and my parking space was gone again. But, as luck would have it, another space opened up. I'll take it for now. Like my dad used to say about every haircut I'd get, regardless of the time of year, it'll last me until Christmas.

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