Working Motherhood, Sick Kid

Having a sick young child is challenging for any parent.
Having a sick five-year-old is a special kind of endurance.

At this age—and younger—children are irrational when they’re sick. Their bodies hurt, their emotions spill, and logic has left the building.

There is crying.
Whining.
Wailing.

“I’m too cold.”
“I’m too hot.”
“I need a hot pack.”
“I need a blanket.”
“That’s the wrong blanket.”
“I need the Spider-Man blanket.”
“This blanket doesn’t keep my legs warm.”

“I want applesauce.”
“I need honey.” (For his throat.)

“Lay by me.”
“You’re too close.”
“I’m too hot.”

“Where are you?”

He was asleep. I took a short shower. I hear him crying in panic.

I rush out with dripping hair and a towel too small to matter, running to him.

“I called and you didn’t answer,” he weeps.

“I’m here,” I say, reaching for him.

He pushes me away. Tears drip onto the Spider-Man blanket—angry tears, hurt tears—because I wasn’t there.

I bundle a towel near his face because when he coughs it triggers a gag reflex and he spits up saliva or applesauce. He leans over the bed, moving the towel away—he doesn’t want it soiled since it’s near his face—and instead uses the sheet.

I’m rearranging work schedules. Answering emails from my phone. Sitting beside him while attending Zoom calls—camera on, camera off, on again—as I zigzag in and out of frame to meet his demands and whims.

I call Grandma, the only one who could come and care for him with the same love that ignores all the whining.

She says she can be here in two hours.

I call work and tell them I can come in later.

His fever spikes to 100.

I cancel Grandma.
I cancel work again.

His coughing fit tightens his throat. I bundle his sixty-pound body and rush him outside into the January air—just like I did throughout the night—so he can breathe, so his airways can open.

He hates it.

He panics from his cold feet, even though he’s wrapped like a burrito in Great-Grandma’s patchwork quilt—stitched with love. I tell him that love will help him heal.

When he settles down, watching the iPad, I attend to the laundry. What was already a pile grows higher with every blanket, towel, and sheet.

I am tired.

I’m pulled in multiple directions, feeling like I should be everywhere at once—yet I don’t want to leave his side.

I don’t want to let everyone else down.
I don’t want to add to anyone else’s plate.
But I also don’t want my son to feel cast aside.

This is inconvenient—but I don’t want him to feel like he is inconvenient.

I want him to be loved.
Nurtured.
To feel nurtured.

Even as he cries.
Even as he complains.
Even as his body betrays him and he feels miserable inside it.

So I sit.

I write. I'm on a business zoom call, half listening.

He is next to me—drool, tears, and snot seeping into the blanket where his head rests as he watches cartoons. His fever is high. An ice pack wrapped in cloth is clutched like a teddy bear.

I type.