By Michelle Naranjo
When I bought my first home in Pennsylvania in late November 2019, I was still relatively new to the state. My domestic partner and I were still trying to find the lids to pots and pans when news of a deadly virus abroad crossed the radio waves. By the time we had finally established which direction the sofa should face in late January 2020, the possibility of hosting a housewarming party had grown dim, but I didn't mind because I didn't have any friends locally, and my partner was exhausted from traveling back and forth to New York City for his job.
By June of 2020, the pandammit boredom had set into our domestication. His work in the City had gone away, and with little else to do we had started working on the house. An orange breadbox on Facebook Marketplace would look perfect on the slate-gray kitchen countertops I had craftily hand-painted to match the matte black sink and faucet procured in one of many online shopping excursions from before the shutdowns.
That is how I met "Beth." She was selling things from her mother-in-law's estate, and, like me, her mother-in-law loved anything that came in orange.
Beth is just a couple of years younger than me and lives just north of us in Carbon County. She is bright, funny, and as we discovered when we met masked in the parking lot of a discount store to exchange a hand sanitizer-wiped $20 bill for a bread box, we have a lot (mostly thrift store shopping) in common. That meeting came in a lull of the COVID-19 epidemic and was just a brief glimpse of blue sky before the infected and dying hockey stick graph began to surge. Our friendship grew the following year over text messages. While I didn't get to see her, I ventured to Carbon County twice to get both of my vaccinations. In early Spring 2021, while vaccine supplies ran low in my county, hospitals in the conservative coal counties were in surplus because no one wanted them.
Almost 20 months since we moved in and with vaccinations widely distributed, my partner and I have planned a housewarming/joint-birthday party for mid-August. It seemed everyone we know is vaccinated, so we see more of my partner's friends. Beth and I even got to meet up at an estate sale in Carbon County. I was masked; she, like most people in Carbon County, was not, and joked that she could tell when people lived on the other side of the turnpike because we still wear masks in public.
After confirming that she and her husband would be coming to the party, Beth dropped the information on me that, despite working as a bartender part-time in the evenings and cleaning at several AirBnB vacation homes in the touristy town of Jim Thorpe, she has yet to be vaccinated. Her mother had some side effects from her jabs, and she just isn't sure she wants to risk "it."
I have childhood friends traveling into town for the event and expect every guest bed to be full. Everyone else invited over the age of 12 has been vaccinated.
And that, dear reader, is the tale of why now I won't have any local friends from Pennsylvania at this party.
While I know that any breakthrough COVID cases would not be severe on our vaccinated friends, I won't require everyone else to "mask up" in my home to protect one person who fears vaccination side-effects more than the coronavirus. This event is supposed to be casual and welcoming Beth is unreasonable for friends who are still wearing masks when out with the general public.