“I think you should come pick up your daughter from school,” the nurse’s voice said over the phone, with some urgency, to my mother. Apparently, I had rolled my eyes back in my head so that only the whites were visible, and my nursery teacher thought I was going to pass out. I wish I could still effectively pull this off, as it would help me in a lot of social situations when I am looking to escape.
My mother rushed to school to get me, concerned over what condition she might find me in, but alas, I was sitting and smiling, and as soon as I was liberated from the school building, I skipped ahead of her all the way home (this was in the days before people drove everywhere), leaving my mother to push an empty stroller and to scratch her head as to why, exactly, she had to pick me up in the first place.
“Only call me if my children throw up or have fever,” she instructed the nurse the next day, upon returning to school. And these became our lifelong criteria as to what was an acceptable reason to stay home from school. We also stayed home for other infectious diseases, like pink-eye, lice and undetermined rashes, but there definitely were fewer germs back then. Now, they have all morphed and multiplied, and it seems as if every week there is something else.
As a parent, I’d like to think I am a little more flexible with this paradigm. A child of mine claimed her hip was hurting, and so I let her take the day off. Magically, as soon as the bus came, her hip woes were forgotten, and so after a few morning activities, I returned her to school. I only allowed this to occur because her hip also hurt her on the last day of camp and she was bedridden all the way until the others came home. I feel like she just didn’t want to go to camp that day, but still, a headache or stomach-ache might have been a little more inconspicuous of an alibi.
Sometimes it is actually nice to spend some one-on-one time with a child, assuming he or she isn’t too whiney, doesn’t talk too much, agrees with whatever I want to do, never asks to be fed and is generally happy. If those criteria are met, then the hip pain can actually turn into an enjoyable experience for us both, and then I am bound to see several more mornings of hip pains occurring in my near future, which I will promptly ignore.
As a child, it never worked for me. I tried complaining, as my siblings claim they remember, that my eyelashes and toenails were hurting, and still, my mother wouldn’t keep me home. I wouldn’t allow a child to stay home for that, either. But there definitely were a lot of other maladies that woke me up in the morning and had me heading over to the thermometer to shove it as far back under my tongue as I could handle, hoping that it would increase my temperature by enough so that my mother would think I was sick. She didn’t.
But what this did do, is that it made me realize that despite my inner ailments, both imagined and real, life had to go on. I still had to get up and go to school because those were my responsibilities. Even if I was exhausted from a late night of studying or going on America Online to chat with my friends (do people still do that?), it didn’t exempt me from my obligation to go to school the next day. And I carry this with me today. Mothers don’t get days off, unless you are unusually lucky and have an amazing backup support system, but we are required to be up with our kids at the crack of dawn (OK, mine actually wake up later), even if we were up until the early morning hours because of a simcha or a concert or a night out with friends. And if we are sick? Still have to feed those kids and help them with homework. Just because we are under the weather does not mean our demands can go unmet.
Recently, the nurse called that one of my kids was sick. Well, actually, I called the nurse because I received some electronic communication from the child’s classmates that I must come ASAP to pick up my kid who “was no longer able to walk.” I knew that my child wasn’t truly ill. These complaints had been going on all week, and yet I had finished my errands for the day and knew that it wasn’t a big deal to make the trip to school and pick up the child, and so I went against my inner voice and I got her. Also because she does not whine a lot, and can entertain herself for hours, so I knew that I would hardly feel her presence as I raced to make dinner before the others were due to come home.
I cannot verify what message I sent. I do not know if I am chiseling away at her work ethic or her sense of dedication to her responsibilities because I indulged her once due to a dizzy spell. Or perhaps I have planted the seed for future embellished ailments, with the hope of a free day off. But I know that when I saw her smile in the hallway of school, and when she skipped back to class to pick up her backpack, she internalized a moment in which I threw everything else aside to “rescue” her, and that brought instant happiness to both of us. Maybe that will have a valid outcome, too.
By Sarah Abenaim
Sarah Abenaim is a freelance writer living in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected] and always appreciates all feedback.
