In Sickness

When my husband came to me groaning with a full-body poison ivy attack, he had to take a number for sympathy. Our teething and feverish 15-month-old daughter was clinging to my leg at the time, screaming because she was hungry and it was taking me forever to fix her mac and cheese. Jason tried to make himself heard over Lily's shrieks, imploring me to just look at his blistered arms. Before I could stop myself, the words were out of my mouth: "I can't take care of both of you at once!"

Later, after putting Lily to bed, I did murmur sympathetically and assure Jason that, yes, his condition was nightmarish. But in that earlier moment of chaos, I fell far short of my vision of how graciously should handle the "in sickness" part of "in sickness and in health." Whenever hear the standard wedding vows - plump with huge abstracts like life, death, wealth, and poverty - they strike me as elevated and noble. "In sickness" evokes cinematic images. In those visions, I'm the devoted spouse keeping vigil by a bedside as my man lingers on the brink of death, or in a coma, or at the very least wearing a full-body cast. And in an extreme situation like that, I do believe would rise to the challenge without wavering. But day-to-day marriage isn't like that; it's much more likely to involve the small-scale maladies that inspire no such grand devotion.

In our household, in fact, petty illness reveals the limits limits of how long-suffering either of us can be. We are each loving and empathetic when the other is first sick, but if a minor illness drags on, our tolerance will begin to crack. That's because illness not only makes each of us needy, it brings out exaggerated versions of our core personality differences. When I'm ill, I want to cuddle and then cuddle some more. This is a problem, because Jason has a low tolerance for clinginess in general, an aversion that becomes even more pronounced if I'm sneezing. This dynamic gets ramped up even more when he's ill: He wants absolutely no physical contact. Instead, he craves endless affirmation that he is really, really sick. Lord help me, but I get tired of finding new ways to say that he is indeed suffering more than any human ought to or ever has before. Imagine, then, the battle of wills when we're both sick: I chase him, and he flees, declaiming his poor health.

It's always been a tricky dance to negotiate our different approaches to illness, but the presence of our daughter has made things even more complicated. The well person must tend to two babies at once - a real baby with her daily needs and a guy just acting like one because he's sick. During Jason's recent bout of poison ivy, it was my turn to be the caretaker for both, and I meant to shoulder the load with equanimity. But as a week passed in which his condition grew only worse - and thus rendered him useless for child-care duties - I grew ever more grumpy and exhausted. I was even a little jealous: Lucky stiff, I thought, why does he get to be the sick one?

Times like that are when wedding vows get their workout. It's telling that most fairy tales end at the nuptials; no one likes to admit that "happily ever after" involves seeing your handsome prince through stomach flu or hernia surgery. You hardly need a ring on your finger to remind you of your vows; when it comes to contemplating what marriage really means, jewelry is no match for cleaning vomit off the bathroom floor.

Fortunately, I was wrong when I snapped that I couldn't take care of both Jason and Lily. I could and I did, and by the second week of the never-ending saga, I was even able to balance both a little better. I admit that I was still not always the most cheerful candy striper on the block, but that's OK, because Jason didn't ask me to be. All he wanted was to know that I was there - and that, yes, he looked just awful.

David Valdes Greenwood’s memoir, Homo Domesticus, is expected to be published in February. E-mail comments to coupling@globe.com.