For Wilshire Baptist Church
With nothing happening on-site at church lately, we’ve been trying to patch some things together that look and feel like church. That has included Zoom Sunday school and committee meetings, YouTube worship, virtual Wilshire Winds performances, preparing meals for a shelter that our class supports, other things like that. I’ve missed our quarterly church blood drives, so I made an appointment at our local Carter BloodCare donation center and gave a unit of the red stuff.
Carter’s Garland donation center is a big open room, and like many places you go nowadays, there was a hollow echo in the air. Donations are by appointment only, and there probably were four donors and six staff while there clearly were accommodations for at least twice that many.
I added my name to the sign-in sheet at the unattended front desk and sat with one other person in the waiting area, appropriately masked and spaced of course. And then they came and got her and I was alone until a woman came in with a service dog. I’d never seen that before at a blood bank, but the dog sat quietly on the floor the same as if at a restaurant or salon. The woman and dog bypassed the sign-in desk and sat down six feet from me, and when I asked her if she needed help signing in, she said she’d do it when someone was at the desk. I told her there had been no-one at the desk, and she just shrugged and chuckled a little. When the pre-donation screener called my name and led me away, I whispered to him, “She’s next after me.”
The screening and blood donation went as usual, although there wasn’t any of the regular small talk because everyone was wearing masks. Soon I was in the corner canteen where they ask you to sit and drink fluids and eat snacks for at least 15 minutes before you leave. While I was there, another donor came into the area and took a wide path around me to get to the goodies, and then we both sat quietly apart, letting our masks down for quick sips and bites. When I was ready to leave after 10 minutes, I circled around her and even turned my back as I carried my empty water bottle and wrapper to the trash can. As I made the same arc around her toward the door, she said, “It’s funny how we all make big circles around each other.”
Thinking that maybe I had offended her, I said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” but she smiled with her eyes and said, “No problem, we do it out of care and not in fear.”
And maybe that’s the way we should try to behave during these strange days — out of care and not out of fear.
To those who are so against wearing a mask, against keeping their distance, against taking extra precautions: You don’t have to do it out of fear. You don’t even have to believe that it’s doing any good. But doing it out of care for others? That’s always good. You can’t go wrong doing good – along with being polite and being civil. Why not give a little on that? Is that so hard? Is that really such an imposition? To care for others — can’t you give that a try?
By the way, when you give blood at Carter BloodCare, they’ll test your donation for COVID-19 antibodies and give you the results in a week or two. They need blood, and the antibody test is a pretty good incentive to give if you’ve been wondering about your exposure to the virus. And if you test positive, they may follow up with you for donations of convalescent plasma, and that’s an even greater way to care for others. But you have to wear a mask.