The last 47 weeks have been a real pain in the tush. We have cocooned at home, seeing no one, not even family, except for my sainted mother-in-law, who popped in occasionally. Our wayward brood lives about a thousand miles away, and even the thought of getting on a plane with a hundred strangers scared the pants off of us.

We have missed lots, including weddings and wakes. We missed meals at our community's wonderful restaurants, headliners who stopped at the Opera House. We missed the warmth of friends sitting around a table trading stories. Some of them were even true.

It has been worse for our friends in the business community, except for the real estate gang who were busy selling homes to folks who wanted to get away from the big cities and their soaring infection rates.

We missed our lives and, in some cases, our livelihoods, all because Mr. COVID-19 lurked outside our cabin door. For the record, it was not a hoax after all. For us, maybe, just maybe, that changed last Friday evening.

Per instructions, we drove to Brunswick, turned into the darkened confines of the former naval base, and stopped at a large building. It was dark out; still, we saw people going inside the glass doors. Some walked briskly, others not so. Some pushed walkers while others held the door so strangers could pass. They directed people to a line of folding tables where smiling volunteers asked questions, filled out papers, and pointed the way to the next station.

There, a tall doctor bade my bride sit down and pull down her sweater. And he gave her the shot, the vaccine we have all heard Dr. Anthony Fauci tout. They shot her with the concoction Big Pharma rolled out to protect us from Mr. COVID. Lincoln Health and Boothbay YMCA have a similar vaccination clinic set up here. The Y is the only facility in our county that is large enough to host a vaccine site. I thought we would go there.

We went to Brunswick and not Boothbay because she has been treated there. Next Friday, I will drive to Togus to visit my friends at the Veterans Administration hospital for my first shot.

I know lots of the folks who read this missive are waiting for their chance to get the shot. Facebook tells me some of our friends from near and far have done it already. We are pleased that the old and infirm, like us, were given a chance to be one of the first groups to submit to the needle.

I know some will shun the vaccine. They will say Big Pharma rushed it out too soon. Some maintain they don't need it because COVID is a hoax, a plot. That is their right. It is a free country. But I am a believer. I am the proud son of a public health nurse who spent much of the 1930s rounding up food for schoolchildren. After a career as a mom, she went back to college, earned a BSN and spent her last years caring for the children of other mothers.

My godfather was a family doc who went through the South Pacific campaign operating in tents. He cared for soldiers as nurses held flashlights so he could see to repair the damage inflicted by the gods of war. For as long as I can remember, they both told me to wash my hands, and cover my mouth when I sneezed, so I would not infect others with the tiny cooties living inside my gullet.

They told me my smiling schoolmates were petri dishes of infection. I thought that was a hoax. These were my friends. Surely they wouldn't infect me. Would they?

Of course, my mother and my godfather were right. It didn't take long for my siblings and our classmates to battle measles, chickenpox and other assorted ailments as we learned to read and write. I learned to trust the folks who study public health and keep us healthy. I am a believer in the vaccine. I can't wait for a doc or nurse to stick a needle in my shoulder.

I know, I know, it is not the end of our long home confinement. Millions of others must be vaccinated before we turn the corner and get back to normal. There will be foul-ups and stumbles and fraud. If they vaccinate the majority of our fellow Americans, it will be a logistical miracle. But for us, last Friday evening, in a gym a few yards from the runway where mighty Navy jets once roared into the sky, we took our first step back into normality.

Will you follow suit?