The Parent Trap: When A Parent Can Do No More

by Kristina Lakes

I will admit that I avoided looking at what was happening at first.  I am a positive, hopeful, can-do type of person. After the pediatrician prescribed a second round of antibiotics for my son who had strep throat, I didn’t worry, I just bought more vitamins. For extra insurance, I made him take the pills with orange juice.

Still, my son didn’t get well. His strep throat turned into pneumonia. So I battened down the hatches. And inside the hatches, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. I bought bleach and Lysol and hand sanitizer. I even washed doorknobs—to be honest, maybe for the first time ever. I mean, sure, I’ve wiped them down before (right before company came), but this time, I got out the Clorox and washed them with hot water and a toothbrush for the crevices.

I tried to keep on keeping on, as the saying goes. I went to work each day, but I got there a little late, and I left a little early. I called doctors during my lunch half-hour. Do doctors ever listen to their answering services? Our pediatrician’s muzak is a scratchy, hideously repetitive mess of sound. The voice that instructs each caller seems to belong to a condescending matriarch who, after five minutes, invites you to leave a message. I would like to leave a message after one minute, thank you. I would like to meet this bitch. I would like to slap her.

I tried hiring my son’s former babysitter to care for him while I was at work. But she was watching younger children now, and they took naps. Would he take a nap? Something in her voice told me that she really didn’t want to watch an 11-year-old.

So I took my son to work with me a couple of times, letting him hide out in my office or in the cafeteria. The co-workers who came upon him were very nice. They greeted us with a raised eyebrow, feigned interest in his Power Rangers, and a little co-conspirator hug for me. Five minutes later, an e-mail would pop on my screen, expressing their concern and offering to do anything. “Anything at all.”

But I could handle it. I multi-tasked. I graded papers in doctors’ offices. I drove too fast to work and too fast home. I began to contract-out my life. I asked the neighbor girl to walk the dogs. I took clothes to the drycleaners, just so I didn’t have to iron them. And I hired a housecleaner. You would think that would be a relief. I had dreamed of a housekeeper for a long time. But instead of luxuriating in the smell of Pine-Sol at the end of the day, in my nice, clean house, I found myself annoyed. When she dusted, she often moved things. And the furniture legs were getting nicked. At least it was clean where it showed, right? But I was mad.

To be honest, I was mad with everyone, even people I had previously seen as my allies, including my son’s teachers. At first I had kept in close contact with them. As a teacher myself, I know the importance of regular communication while a student is out sick. So I wrote e-mails, called during their planning periods, and stopped by the school to pick up his work.

But one teacher was my undoing. She wrote, “He still hasn’t turned in the blue packet. I sent it home before Christmas.” A week later she wrote, “The blue packet needs to be turned in as soon as possible.” I had looked everywhere. I couldn’t just ask her for another one. That would mean that I was unorganized, that maybe I wasn’t handling it. Finally, the teacher sent home the report card that held his first C ever, with a note, “I am STILL expecting the blue packet.” Damn those capital letters.

I didn’t care about the blue packet. I cared about my son, who was sleeping too much, sometimes 16 hours a day. I cared about what he was eating, how many times he had or hadn’t peed that day, his pale skin, his chapped lips, his ankles that had disappeared into swollen blobs, and his fingers that no longer could even put together his beloved Legos. I cared that after my husband and I moved his mattress onto the floor of our room, we found out that he gasped every single time he turned over.

The pneumonia had triggered a severe infection which was ravaging his whole body. On the way home from the hospital after treatment for a septic elbow joint, my son asked me to buy him bigger pj’s so they would be easier for him to get on. While I was there, I bought myself some more sweatpants, even though I had stopped working out long ago. One size larger.

A week later, I noticed that my son’s walk had become slower. My husband made a call, to his supervisor, asking to be switched to the night shift, so he could be home with our son during the day. It didn’t matter that we wouldn’t see each other. And it certainly didn’t matter that we wouldn’t be sleeping with each other.

I stopped curling my hair. I bought barrettes.

Still, I kept going. Spring was coming. Things would get better then. I wrote thank you letters for the Christmas presents. So they were a little late? Everyone would understand. I bought spring bulbs to force in clay pots on the kitchen windowsill. So they were a little late. Maybe Mother Nature would understand.

My sister, a nurse, urged me to fill out the paperwork for the Family Medical Leave Act. A few of my coworkers encouraged me to file it too, confiding at lunch that they were actually jealous that I could get so much time off.

But as I considered it later in my office, it seemed like a solemn, final edict. Your family is in crisis. You have an emergency. You are leaving the career you love. You are going to become… a fulltime caregiver in big sweatpants.

But there was no denying that my son was clearly getting worse. He had developed arthritis, which had been triggered by the strep or pneumonia. These weren’t just stiff joints, this was can’t-hold-a-water-glass arthritis. The pediatrician recommended that we take our son to a specialist in rheumatology at a large, metropolitan hospital. Since we had to wait two weeks (two weeks!) to get in, I spent extraordinary amounts of time on WebMD every night, desperately searching for answers.

Blurry-eyed and tired, I still dragged myself to work every day. After all, I am a professional.

Then, yesterday, my son called me. “I am hungry, tired, scared, and sore,” he cried.

It was a mother’s worst nightmare. “Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

“He’s asleep. I don’t want him. I just want you.”Of course. Every child wants his mommy when he’s sick. Heck, I still want my mommy when I’m sick.I sighed. (A good mother wouldn’t have sighed. But I did.) There were so many pieces of paper on my desk. So many projects that needed my attention. So many proposals to write, evaluations to do, and there were even some letters of recognition for me in the piles. I was good at my job. I had worked hard to get to this place. But I was spending less and less time in this place every day. I wasn’t happy here any longer. My family needed me more than I needed this job.

So I left. I wrote a hastily-scribbled note and left it on my door. “Gone home. Child sick. Will be back!”

The exclamation point wasn’t very professional, but I’m perky too, much to my chagrin. And I really wanted to believe that I would be back.

I drove home with shaking hands, going 70 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h. known speed-trap. (You think you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?) A red car was in the left lane. I turned on my brights, but she still wouldn’t move over. I tailed her for a mile. I honked—twice. Finally I swerved to the right, about to go around her, but the car in that lane slowed, and I slammed on the brakes.

There was no screeching, there was no glass. There were no cops, no ambulances, no tears. But next time, there would be. And I knew it.

When I got home, I settled my son into bed. I knew what would make him feel better. I went in his room and found his old stuffed animal that he had when he was younger, a duck named Alfie. Wouldn’t you know it, that damn blue packet was under Alfie. Probably the housekeeper had put it there.

I rifled through it. This is what all the fuss what about? Shoot, it was just a bunch of worksheets about the solar system. James had learned these concepts long ago. “The earth rotates around the _______. The earth spins and ______________. The earth is tilted slightly upon its __________.” Somehow I had forgotten that last, little fact from fifth grade science.

I imagined the Earth there, hanging in space, leaning crazily, but steadily, slowly making her way around the universe. And the moon revolved around her, in idolatry, oblivious to her precarious state. She was still dependable enough that clocks were set by her, and calendars were charted by her.

I grabbed Alfie and took him into my room. Both my husband and my boy were snoring. I tucked Alfie in with James. He stirred and smiled. “Thanks, Mom,” he said simply and closed his eyes again.

I walked slowly out to the pristine living room and picked up my computer. Once I navigated to my job’s website, I scrolled past new mandates, numerous requests for committee work, and descriptions of new initiatives. I finally found the Human Resources site, and I filled out the paperwork online. “Is this a Family Emergency Leave?” I read.

I clicked yes.