Got up this morning and read the NY Times daily briefing. Sandra Lindsay, a Black critical care nurse got the very first American vaccine shot yesterday morning in Queens, NYC. My first thought - Yeah!! A Black woman getting it before thousands of far more "important" white men. And she was quoted as saying "I feel like healing is coming”.

I've been observing that Black women are represented in far greater numbers than the US as a whole in the pictures and videos I see of the CV-19 front lines - the ICU units. I have a soft spot for Black nurses. I have seen very few in my hospital trips (nearly all-white Portland) and none stand out except a nurse at Portland's trauma hospital where I was taken with broken ribs, collapsed lung and massive shoulder damage. This one nurse, a very large, imposing woman, was the only person who could roll me over in bed without excruciating pain that went right through the massive amounts of opiates I was on. She was on the (trauma unit intensive!) weekend shift. I was there Saturday afternoon to Wednesday. Early am hours Sunday and Monday I rang for a nurse to get rolled over. (I'm a side-sleeper.) She could do it. Hurt a lot. AM Tuesday I rang again. This week shift nurse was normal sized woman. Barely strong enough to roll me over. And the pain! A solid 10 - with opiates. Never rang again. When I went back for follow-up, the doctors all said, yeah she (the Black nurse) is our best.

10 years later, visiting my dad in his last months at an Alzeimers facility. Locked doors. You checked in at the lobby then they opened the door, you entered and they locked behind you. Jamaica Plains, Boston, 2010. Every staff member inside the doors was Black, either Haitian or native to Boston.

And an aside - my home town, also my dad's lifelong home, was entirely white when I was growing up. Its long border was Boston. Some of the adjacent Boston neighborhoods were black but there was near zero cross-over. My dad made it a point of telling us that we were to to give everybody a chance to show what they could do. We saw that with his very limited dealings with non-white. Adult years - I sailed with my day across an ocean and to many places that were not white. The boat had a tiny diesel engine that we didn't run much and that saw some real storms; the boat being rolled 90 degrees and the like. Not real diesel "tickled pink" conditions. We would put into small town wharves in places like Blanc Sablon, Labrador and ask for the local diesel mechanic. At Blanc Sablon we got the ferry mechanic. The ferry, a small ocean going ship that could run the open water straight between Labrador and Newfoundland year 'round. Mechanic was a local Native American, little education but had a lifetime of experience with diesels. My dad, from old New England roots, Harvard, MIT. All of which came through his speech all his life. Mechanic had never dealt with an engine that small! One he could have dropped through the fuel injectors of his "baby" the ferry engine that stood 20 feet high. (Well, not quite.) At first it was clear the mechanic was far off his element with the engine and far more with my dad. After a while, he realized we needed his skill; that our life could depend on this tiny engine working - and that this little thing was just a diesel engine with all the same stuff his baby had, just radically smaller. Using that logic, he traced his way to the parts that had to be causing the symptoms we described, removed them and did as needed to get them working again. And came to realize that we needed him and his skill. That my dad knew that all his background and education was nowhere near a match for that man's knowledge.

So, back to the Alzeimers unit. I got to see my dad in a place where the only whites were fellow Alzeimers and dementia patients with whom he felt little connection. My dad was far enough "gone" that he barely knew who I was; his first child. First visit, no sign of recognition. Second, he called me my brother's name. But I got to see that he genuinely loved the staff. That they loved him. (And over my two visits, many took me aside and told me just that.) That my dad did indeed get to live out what he told us early on we had to do; that it was so core to him that when he was past rational thought, he just did it.

So, long ramble. I know this little matter that I am celebrating today isn't going to change a lot of minds. Still ...