vaccines are obviously a big topic right now. marc and I both have one covid shot and will have our second in a few weeks. Olive, age 7 almost 8, is a little upset that there isn't one for kids, but she also knows that when her parents are vaccinated we are going to relax a little on some of the isolation we've been through. science museums, trampoline parks, roller coasters - all things we skipped last year, but with community spread plummeting and vaccinated adults, we might be back out in the world.
sitting curled up on my lap she asked what's it like to get a vaccine because she's never had one. WHAT? Olive, you JUST got a flu shot, you don't remember that? She said oh yeah. But that's the only one.
Again... Olive you've had A TON OF VACCINES, so I pulled up the Kansas Vaccine Schedule and I told her that she got this whole grocery list! just doesn't remember, because they were mostly when she was a baby.
We went through the schedule and I read off all the things we've never had to worry about. Some of it I know about and explained it to her. Pertussis, polio, tetanus, chickenpox... we've got stories, sometimes even in our family among older relatives, so I told her what those things are. Then there's extras. I have no idea what diphtheria or pneumococcus are. Why? Because they're vaccinated away, we never have to deal with them. This is beautiful.
The vaccine schedule doesn't have much for a seven year old. Her 10 year old sister will get HPV and meningococcal conjugate soon, that's exciting. But Olive is in a void. She's forgotten all her baby vaccines, like all of us, and we just live our lives being happy and oblivious. We had this one pandemic, and we were untouched. We get our flu shots. We don't think about anything else. We don't talk about it. And we definitely don't walk around in graveyards, to the old sections, where the children's names are so much more common. That is too much to think about. We have other things to do.
