There were Three…
The Shaw’s Plaza in our town—to distinguish it from the Shaw’s Plazas in various other towns in Massachusetts, of which there are many—has had a tough time of it for a while. When we first moved here, 23 years ago, there wasn’t an empty spot in the eight-store strip. The crash of 2007 took a slow, steady toll over the next decade. FashionBug, Papa Gino’s, Rite-Aid, Dress Barn, Dots, and a couple of hole-in-the-wall food joints have closed their doors. The grocery store remains, along with a Vietnamese restaurant, a shipping store, an athletic clothing store, and a bank. Three empty storefronts. The sight makes me a little sad whenever I visit, which is at least once a week, most weeks.
I miss Rite-Aid the most. Back when this drugstore was called Osco I bought some novelty coffee cups and soup bowls for two dollars each. Bright colors inside and out, with expressive faces painted on them. Happy, sad, grumpy, bored, sick, perplexed, amused. They would show up in the center aisle displays every once in a while. Sonny loved them, and so did I. I would pick up one or two at a time and planned to add to our collection slowly but steadily, since each restock featured new designs. Of course we broke almost all of them over the years, with just a couple of soup bowls remaining. Rite-Aid seemed to have discontinued the line, but I was always a little hopeful that I’d find some tucked away.
Then there were Two…
At the beginning of the summer of 2022 the Public Health Department turned one storefront into a clinic. A sign outside said “walk-ins welcome,” so I entered. Receptionist, registrar, and three nurses; I was the lone customer. I asked for the Pfizer booster, and less than ten minutes later my arm was being swabbed. Quite a difference from Covid shots #1 and 2!
Way, way back in the spring of 2021 it took nearly a week just to book an appointment for my Johnson & Johnson shot. A month later I visited the drive-through clinic at the rec center. I arrived as instructed, exactly 10 minutes before my appointment time, to find a line of cars that stretched at least a quarter of a mile, with police directing the traffic and answering questions. It took 45 minutes to travel the two blocks into the clinic proper, which was several stations set up under a big white tent. I rolled down my car window and rolled up my sleeve. After the jab one of the attendants directed me to a lane in the big parking lot behind the ice hockey rink, where I listened to NPR for about 25 minutes, shivering—we were supposed to keep the windows cracked, and it was a cold April day—until my lane was released into the wilds of traffic.
The nurse at the Shaw’s Plaza clinic asked the customary screening questions about drug allergies, heart conditions, and whether I’d had Covid recently. She offered free take-home tests, which I declined, as we have seven boxes of them following my husband Dave’s bout of the illness. (He’s fine, fortunately!) She also offered me some post-shot tips.
The tips were new to me. It’s probable that some of this information was included in the small-type paperwork I got with my other shots, but I hadn’t exactly studied it. My reactions to the J&J injections had been a slightly aggravated tendency to nap and a little stinging in my arm. My J&J booster shot was also at the rec center’s outdoor clinic, on a November day about as cold and damp as the April day had been, but it was significantly faster with only about 10 cars in the lot rather than dozens.
The nurse recommended that I take it easy for the rest of the day, wave my arm around a lot so it wouldn’t get as sore, and drink lots of water. The needle part was quick. She stuck a bandage on my arm and walked me to the recovery area for my 15 minutes of observation, pointing me to the table with free snacks and water bottles and various health leaflets.
As I waited for the clock’s display to reach 9:05, I wondered about one of the nurse’s tips. She’d said that lots of water would “help circulate the medicine through [my] system.” I googled. Apparently she was referring to circulation of the antibodies the body produces in response to the vax, as the circulatory system works better when the body is well hydrated. I still had 10 minutes, so I looked up the word “booster.” In North America in the 1800s, this term started to denote people who enthusiastically promote and support their town, Birdsburg, say (for any Wodehouse fans reading), or their athletic team, or, as it’s still used in my town today, their band or drama program. I closed my eyes and pictured rah-rah antibodies brimming with arterial energy, visiting every organ, shaking hands with dignitaries and promising that Jean is truly an up-and-coming concern, yessiree!
Then there was One…
At 9:06 I left the clinic and visited Shaw’s for a cookie and a little bouquet. The bouquet was comprised of daisies dyed purple, pink, orange, and red. Sunset colors. On the way back to the car, waving my arm like I was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, I noticed that a martial arts studio had opened next to the Pho restaurant. An apartment complex being built across the street, almost finished, except for the balconies, will probably provide lots of potential customers for the Plaza stores. As it turned out, all of my arm waving didn’t seem to help much. As the hours passed the arm got pretty sore. I took it easy, drank water, and imagined Shaw’s Plaza with no empty storefronts.
the jeanSpace 