Sorry, But “In Sickness & In Health” Means You’ll Love Me if I Give Your Mother COVID

I didn’t want to travel for the holidays. Not in a pandemic. Not to Central Pennsylvania and your Fox News, Pirro-hero parents. And definitely not once I picked up a cough from my pandemic job delivering packages for Amazon. So, I’m sorry that I gave your mother COVID, but it’s not completely my fault.

Listen, we made our vows, now we have to sleep in them. If “for richer or poorer” means that when I get laid off, I have about a week to get back on the pony — during a worldwide economic shutdown — before I succumb and take a job at Amazon, then “in sickness and in health” means you can’t divorce me just because I brought a raging pandemic into your ancestral home. You know how I feel about Scamazon. But I put up with the shame, the working conditions, and the daily interactions with unmasked heathens, just to keep us afloat. And by “us” and “afloat” I mean “you” and “your insistence on throwing money at Blue Apron even though before March your idea of ‘cooking’ was microwaving Pop Tarts.” But I did it. Because I took a vow.

And those vows brought our families together, “for better or worse.” So, when we packed the car on Wednesday, even though I had a slight fever — and when you insisted it was “psycho-symptomatic,” I didn’t correct you on the idea or the word — I took a Dayquil, buckled up, and drove into the hellmouth of COVID.

No. No, I am not calling your mother a “hellmouth” — no, it’s –. Ugh. That’s not what I meant.

I’ve put up with a lot from your family over the years. Your father’s insistence — ever since he learned I was from a quaint seaside village in Connecticut — on referring to me as “oyster cracker.” Your brother’s go-to of high-fiving me for every deed, whether sinking the 8-ball or getting you pregnant. Your mother’s repeatedly calling me “Little Jeff,” as if the corporate ladder at Amazon is two rungs: Driver and Bezos. But when I request it, they can’t wear a simple mask for a few hours during a plague?

Your mother won’t cover her nose because she “cooks the turkey by smell.” Your father refuses to mask-up at all because “it’s a mind-control tool implemented by the Clintons and forced upon Americans by the AOC-Commies.” So, when he glared threateningly at my mask — a mask you bought me, I might add, to match my holiday sweater — I took the it off, and just held my breath.

That wasn’t a nap I took — I just passed out for a while.

I’m not sure when I gave your mother COVID. It may have been my coughing fit during the football game, when your father called the Washington Football Team by their dead name. Your mother brought me water and held her face within inches of mine as I wheezed, insisting I “drink up.”

It may have been as we wiled away at the jigsaw puzzle, and she leaned close to whisper “social distance is really an oxymoron, isn’t it?” No, I wasn’t flirting with your mother — she flirted with me!

It may have been at dinner, when she insisted “the six-foot rule doesn’t apply within thirty minutes of saying Grace.”

Look, I can appreciate that me giving your mother COVID is toward the bad end of the “Better or Worse” spectrum. But I didn’t want to give it to her. I didn’t want to be there at all.

I know I’m on thin ice here. I know I’m in the high-risk population for getting another death stare and a raging case of the Silence. But I didn’t just give your Mother COVID; I have it, too. Maybe before we get to the “Death do us part” part, a little love and cherishing would be nice.