A. and I don’t have any children together, because we met too late in life, it would seem, for that circumstance to occur, though for a time we hoped to have one, and thought for a few months, not long after we’d met, that that was going to happen (we lost a pregnancy during A.’s first trimester, several years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic); so now we continue as a childless couple, and live with a couple of cats, which I do not mention to bring about a sad mood, or to elicit pity, but only because it is true, and because I am trying to record here a few true things, even if they are not ‘big’ truths, but instead pertain only to the ‘smallness’ and mundanity of my own life, which I have been trying to amend of late, and bring into accordance with the tenets of my faith, which has not been easy to do, and which in fact I have not yet done; not, anyway, as completely or as thoroughly as I need to do, for I continue to live in what could be called a state of habitual sin, partially through what the Church might refer to as the ‘irregularity’ of my marriage to A., but also through a more pervasive inability to hold fast to what I know to be virtue.