The story right now

     As someone who mines his daily life for material, often of a truly insignificant nature — I wrote three columns in July, 2021 about picking up after dogs — I notice when I'm avoiding something that is actually quite a big deal, and pause to ask myself why.
     Usually I have good reason. The boys, for instance. I wrote about them for years and years. But they're not boys anymore — they're men, adults in their mid-20s, both lawyers, who are by nature circumspect. I want them to feel comfortable sharing information with me, and my not rushing the details of their lives into print, here, on Facebook, or anywhere else, seems part of that bargain. When one of them argues in front of the Supreme Court, or is appointed to it, I'll let you know.  If it's okay with them.
     Or COVID. I was diagnosed June 30, and while I've mentioned it a time or two, I decided to spare you the full range of particulars. Why? Being sick isn't that interesting, for starters. An off-putting mix of the squeamish and the dull, a variety of mundane symptoms like constant coughing, set into an empty day of exhausted langor. Plus I've seen older bloggers try to turn their medical woes into "Aida," and made a mental note to myself: don't do that.

     I did start a column this morning on the hideous side effects of Paxlovid, but liked it so much I thought I'd save it to run in the newspaper Wednesday — I've found myself still able to write, which is fortunate, if odd. I can be completely drained, sprawled on the sofa, a motiveless bag of skin, my mind a blank. Yet heave myself in front of the keyboard, the fire bell clangs, the old wagon horse stirs on its straw, and away we go. At least so far.

     Anything else? When my wife, who also has COVID was in the worst of it — and we seem to be trading off, back and forth, one sinking while the other improves and does the nursing  — and I was executing my caregiver duties, I came up with a term I feel could be worth putting into an empty bottle and tossing out onto the electronic waves: "chuppah sick."

     If you are not familiar with the term chuppah, it is the canopy that Jewish couples stand under when they marry. In my neologism, it refers to a situation so unspeakably gross that you flash back to your wedding day and wonder what you would have thought then had this particular aspect of married life been shown to you. A reminder that old marriage couples deserve respect, because we are tough old birds. We do what has to be done.

     I know where the term came from. There's a scene on page 50 of my memoir "Drunkard" where, in the first week of recovery, my wife and I go to Shir Hadash for Rosh Hashanah services. During a sermon on caregivers, Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow says: "How many couples look back to the day when they first stood under the chuppah and then look at their lives today and think, 'We never imagined it would be like this!"

      The book continues:

     Edie and I burst out laughing. No shit, Rabbi. We never imagined it would be like this. We laugh and don't stop. Not discreet, into-the-fist giggling. But big guffaws that draw curious looks. I don't care. We keep going, the chuckles beginning to ebb, until we glance at each other and then erupt again. We never imagined it would be like this. That helped. A lot. Laughter usually does. 

     We haven't quite managed to laugh at COVID, yet, though we have exchanged a fist bump or two, and do appreciate the besieged-soldiers-in-a-foxhole aspect of the past two weeks, when time has lost its meaning, and we have nothing better to do than wait, and care for ourselves and each other. Which itself is a kind of meaning.