My nose was dripping, my throat hurt, my stomach would accept only ginger ale and soda crackers. I should have been in bed. But moms,
especially work-at-home moms, have no sick leave and no one to pinch hit for us when we're down for the count. "Hi, Mom. Why are you crawling up the stairs on your hands and knees?" My 11-year-old asked.
"I'm sick," I croaked, thinking she'd feel sorry for me and offer to pick up her room.
"Oh," she said with disinterest. But my child is an optimist. She never fails to find the silver lining in any cloud.
She brightened with a sudden thought.
"If you're sick you're probably not going to feel much like eating, so can I have your dessert?" she asked.
Just as Rodney Dangerfield moans about receiving no
respect, a work-at-home mom receives little sympathy when she contracts one of those miserable colds or viruses that seem to permeate parenthood. Most people assume that because we hole up in our houses, we're
germ-proof. Not so. Those of us with kids are lucky enough to have them imported to us -- by our own off-spring.
So, once they've subjected us to some miserable ailment, do they treat us as we do them? Lugging
cauldrons of homemade chicken soup, crackers and ginger ale, not to mention sympathy, upstairs to their rooms? Plumping their pillows and taking their temperatures? Popping a good movie into the VCR to entertain them?
Sure they do. And they also keep their rooms spotless, eat all their vegetables and pitch in around the house without ever being asked.
I sat with a box of tissues, my nose beet red and stuffy, head
pounding, attempting to make my deadline on a piece about a member of the British House of Commons who's been dust for the better part of several centuries. It wasn't exactly pulse-racing stuff and the medicine I
was taking made me drowsy.
"I'm hungry," my son offered.
"Eat a sandwich," I countered.
"But I don't want a sandwich."
"I don't either. I want some of that homemade chicken noodle soup I
always fix for you when you're sick. But I'm a Mom and no one makes me soup." I answered, with just the right touch of whininess.
He looked puzzled. "Homemade soup? Oh, you mean that stuff that comes in the
box?"
I agreed with a certain amount of guilt. Well, maybe it isn't really homemade. But if I really did make homemade chicken noodle soup, it would taste exactly like the stuff in the box, so what's the
difference?
"Gee, Mom, I'd make you some but you won't let me turn on the stove by myself." Details, details, details. They never remember anything that interferes with something they WANT to do. But it was
obvious I wasn't going to get any sympathy out of this crowd. I called my editor.
"I'm sick," I said.
"So am I," he said.
"I think I have a sinus infection."
"I do, too. Plus an ear infection."
"Both my ears are infected," I said, not to be outdone.
"But I also have typhoid fever."
"Typhoid fever! Only pirates and mercenaries get typhoid fever.
You sit at a desk in a room with no windows all day. You can't have typhoid fever."
"Good point. But if you're sick, so am I. And REAL writers don't let a little discomfort stand between them and their
deadlines."
"Are you trying to say my story is still due today?"
"Do bananas grow on trees?"
"I'll have it to you by five," I sniffed.
"Make it four. I'm going home early. I don't feel so good."
Oh well. Maybe I'll get a little break when my spouse gets home. Of course, the last time I was sick he spent two days eating cookies straight
from the bag and watching Baywatch reruns while the kids lived on Pop Tarts and Pepsi.
On the other hand, he does have permission to turn on the stove, so there's an outside possiblility I might just get a
little of that chicken soup after all. Now if I could just teach him the how to write a feature story....
