My brother has had a recent health crisis. My sister and I are thinking we should visit him, probably in early November. The last time either of us saw him was 2010, and his wife some years earlier. He's 78. I'm 73. Sister is 68. We understand quite clearly that at best there is still limited time for all of us.
If we make the trip, we will drive. I'm in New Mexico. Sister is in Kansas. Brother is in the Washington DC area. The up side of such a trip will be seeing various people, including my son who is also in the DC area, and who I last saw in October, 2019.
But as much as I'd like to see those people, I'm still a bit hesitant about such a journey. My state, New Mexico, has a face mask mandate, and people here are VERY good about it. When I go to a store, every single person there is masked. Properly masked. No noses hanging out.
As much as I miss my son, I've been saying that I'm not willing to get on a plane to visit him, and I'm not about to ask him to do something I'm not willing to do. So, aside from the possible visit connected to my brother, it may well be several more years before I see him. And as much as I miss him, that's okay.
In 1962 my mother moved us five kids and herself from Utica, NY, to Tucson AZ to get away from her abusive alcoholic husband. Our father. She absolutely did the right thing. But when we made that move we assumed we would probably never ever see family or friends again. As it turned out, things changed, and visiting family and friends did happen in somewhat later years. So these days, what with Covid, we can't travel much right now, and as far as I'm concerned that's fine, because someday this will end and we'll be able to go back to our previous level of travel.
I personally have always been annoyingly healthy. I will hold my immune system up against pretty much anything. Don't do flu shots. But I did get the vaccine, because I'm not a complete idiot. I'm also old enough to remember the mass vaccinations for polio. Actually, the Catholic school we attended was one of the ones involved in the Salk vaccine trials, and my older sister was one who got the trial shots. Alas, she was in the control group and needed to get the real thing after. Oh, well. At that time there was a kid in my class, Tommy something or another, who'd had polio and walked with crutches. So polio was sort of part of my life.
And while I don't want to minimize polio or Covid, the long term effects of Covid are still not fully understood. Back at the very beginning of this pandemic a friend of mine got Covid and has become one of the long haulers. He had zero opportunity to get the vaccine, and he'll be dealing with this the rest of his life.
= new reply since forum marked as read
