Last week, we were getting ready to fly to New Hampshire to attend the first birthday of my first granddaughter who was also getting baptized and trying her first piece of cake all in one weekend. And a few days before we were set to leave, my husband woke up with a cough.

Now, in the real world, this would not have qualified as an extraordinary event. A little cough can stay a little cough and not qualify as a national emergency.

But then, you don’t know my husband. He is one of many men for whom a cold is tantamount to the greatest tragedies known to man: the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg disaster, or the starvation of millions of Russians in the Holodomor.

I immediately questioned whether he should stay home rather than travel to the party. Since my granddaughter was born at the end of the pandemic, my daughter is, justifiably, very focused on germs and she’s not afraid to shut the door on anyone who is cavalier about exposing her baby to their pesky little colds and flus. Many illnesses circulating today can be pernicious to little ones, including RSV.

But he wouldn’t hear of it. By Thursday, he thought, he was feeling better, and he brought his suitcase to the door.

Another reason I was gun shy about his cold and his plan to travel came from recent experience, which is, in itself, a very sad tale.

About eight weeks ago, around Christmastime, my husband and I set off for a romantic getaway. We hadn’t planned a vacation together to an island, alone, to perch in white sand by a blue sea in all our years of marriage. This was to be a special trip for just the two of us.

We spent weeks planning, finding the perfect spot and the perfect flights and the perfect itinerary, which involved a few short hikes, some nice dinners, and then not doing much of anything else, which for us was perfect.

But on the flight to our island destination, a masked man was moved to our row and plopped right next to my husband, and within two days he came down with a terrible flu. I spent most of the week running to the store for expensive Kleenex and flu medicine, and he spent a lot of the week in bed. On the last day, I came down with the flu myself, and the rest, as they say, is history. We spent a lot of money and a big slice of a dream to look at the blue sea from a window.

My husband is very much like the guys accused of having the “man flu,” which is a term that implies a lot of men act like babies when they are sick. It’s a thing everybody knows exists. It’s written about and talked about so don’t hate me for saying it out loud. My husband is just beside himself when he is sick, consumed with it, sighing loudly several times a minute, miserable and focused on his misery. So, when I suggested he not come along to the birthday party, I wasn’t lacking sympathy; I just knew what was coming. And I was right.

By the time we landed in New England, he was full blown sick. He felt lousy, he sounded lousy, and we were now squarely in three-alarm fire territory. We booked a hotel near my daughter’s house and waited out the storm. Only the storm never passed. On the last day, I woke up sick myself.

And as silly as it seems, I felt angry. Two trips in two months! What had we done to deserve this? It’s one of those moments you look up at the universe and scream, “Oh, come on! Seriously?” And then for effect, you throw in another “seriously?”

Home, and in bed now, I am a less demanding patient than he is. I have, after all, given birth three times, suffered through stomach flus when the whole house was sick and sharing one bathroom, still rising to run to the store for ginger ale and soup. I have cooked dinner with a 102 degree fever, gotten the kids to school three days after a surgery, and given baths during a bout of food poisoning.

Beyond the debate of who suffers illness better–men or women–there is a lesson here. In our post-pandemic times, it’s important to think twice before traveling with bad germs to see family. We’ve become wiser about how germs are transmitted, and we now know illness can effect each one of us differently. It’s just not worth the risk, however sad that is. We live in different times. We have to adjust.