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Working from home enables me to have the best of both worlds. I can teach full time, pursue professional development on my own schedule, and research, write and present all from the comfort of home sweet home. I can also get my kids off to school, work recess duty and share the day with our puppy. This typically works out quite well. However, when flu season rolls around, the house turns into an infirmary staffed by mom the nurse. When home sweet home becomes home sick home, the best of both worlds collide and leaves me attempting to pick up the resulting pieces.
If my schedule for the day is light, and the ill one isn’t too ill, I can generally manage. When my day is fully scheduled, deadlines are looming and my daughter is vomiting incessantly, I feel frustrated and incompetent. I want to get my work done, and hope that doing so will alleviate the shallow breathing and pounding in my temples that accompanies it. If I can just get through the eleven o’clock meeting, then I can sit with Ella. If I can just finish the seminar grades, then I can make her homemade chicken soup. If I can get the proposal submitted, I can watch a movie with her. I spend the day struggling with guilt that stems from unfinished work combined with my maternal yearning to slow down, be mom, and spend some quiet time with my ten year old vomiting girl. You might not guess it from this picture, but my girl can be pretty demanding. When she is sick, she wants her mom. I’m physically there with her, but she wants me to be present as well. And I want that, too.
Balancing work and family is surely a struggle for any working mother. It becomes more complicated when your home is your office. You are physically present, even when you are mentally in a meeting, at a conference or in a research library. Being an effective virtual employee requires the ability to commute mentally. It is an ability I have worked to hone. It enables me to wear the hats of professor, author, mother and wife simultaneously. Adding the nurses cap can be enough to throw me over the edge, however. I’m hoping that this flu is a twenty four hour bug. I can work after the kids are in bed and get caught up on the work I neglected caring for my girl. After a few days with the nurses cap on the top of the hat pile, I will be exhausted and likely to get sick myself. I will take a lot of immunity supplements. I will spend as much time as I possibly can with my sick one and enjoy the quiet minutes (between rounds of vomiting). My work will be there after she is bunkered in for the night. Cross your fingers and say a little prayer for a twenty four hour bug. That, nurse mom can handle.
In case your work week is in turmoil from the flu, check out http://www.cdc.gov/flu/ for some tips on managing and preventing flu.
