DotMoms

News kids can use?

By Meredith

From time to time, I suffer from this nagging worry about the fact that I let my three kids watch the news with me.

On any given evening while I'm making dinner -- unless of course I'm on some crushing deadline and dinner will be hastily-poured bowls of cereal -- I flip on the local and then the national news in the kitchen, frequently leaving it chattering in the background while we eat.

A former newspaper reporter, I teach journalism to college students, to whom I am constantly stressing the importance of keeping up with current events. I want and need to keep abreast of the news, so not only does the news appear on the TV, but it's in the newspapers that sit on the kitchen counter or on the coffee table in the family room. And now that my twin second-graders can read, they can tell what's going on in the world by scanning the headlines and listening to the TV news anchors.

There are some who think that children should be shielded from the news, that the innocence of youth shouldn't be corrupted by the evils of the world that are beamed into our homes on the newscasts or plastered in full-color photos on the front pages of our newspapers. And, for the record, when TV broadcasts are showing or talking about gruesome or inappropriate subject matter, I turn off the TV (think of the Duke rape case). Likewise, when the front pages of the newspapers run graphic images (think of Saddam Hussein with the rope around his neck before his hanging), I hide those papers from the kids.

But, that being said, I think there's virtue in teaching kids to understand that the world isn't necessarily a rosy place, that sometimes bad things happen and that we should do what we can to help one another and to make the world better. When a news report about the war in Iraq comes on, for example, it prompts a civics discussion at our dinner table while my husband and I explain what's happening. In those moments, I can usually count on my 8-year-old son to be empathic about the plight of soldiers serving overseas and express concern for the families left behind.

When the first woman was sworn in as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and we watched and read about the event together, we found suddenly ourselves in a discussion about women's suffrage, shocking my kids when they learned that women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years.

The lessons learned through being informed about the world, through the understanding that they shouldn't take their blessings for granted, and through figuring out how important it is to participate in our democracy, all, I think, override concerns that may plague me periodically about exposing my children to the news at such a young age ... even though my 5-year-old is fond of saying, "I don't like that Brian Williams."

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Mama be lookin' good. Or else.

By Meredith

While rushing through the gymnastics school where my kids take classes, I caught a glimpse of a headline on one of the many parenting magazines hanging around for the bored parents to skim as they wait for their offspring to complete their tumbling runs. This particular headline warned parents -- but, let's be honest, they were talking directly to moms -- not to fall into a sweatpants rut, to be more conscious about their fashion choices while toting Junior to soccer practice, to take the time to dress to impress.

I looked down at what I was wearing, as I carried my kindergartner on my hip through the crowd, and kept an eye on my 8-year-old son and directed his twin sister to her lessons. (My kindergartner was angry, being recalcitrant and had to be carried into the building or else I would've had to have dragged him in.)  I had on my Land's End capri sweatpants - in classic heather gray. A red zip-up sweatshirt with white racing stripes down the shoulders. Some snarky T-shirt underneath. (I think it was the one calling me the "Lead Actress in a Comedy." A joke too many don't seem to get.)

And then I thought, "Do I really need this pressure?"

I work from home while my kids are in school. (I teach once a week at a university and they have a sitter that afternoon.) I try to wring every spare moment of my time in the house trying to get work done so that when the kids are released from school I can run them all over town to their activities, get them snacks, oversee their homework, prepare dinner and get them to bed. I don't typically have a ton of time to worry about my clothing and makeup.

Now don't get me wrong, I like fashionable clothes. I like makeup. I'm even ashamed to admit that I wear makeup -- along with sweats or my yoga pants, some kind of T-shirt and a fleece jacket -- when I'm coaching my daughter on the soccer field. (Whenever I forgo makeup, children tend to ask me why I look tired.)

But I don't like people pressuring me to look like a Desperate Housewife while I'm running around dealing with small people. Not that moms don't tend to look good, it's that they don't always have the time to spend on looking all hot and fashionable when they're doing their paid (or unpaid) jobs AND being parents. Sometimes simultaneously.

We don't ask people at construction sites to ditch their filthy duds and dirt-covered hard hat in favor of some stone washed jeans and couture with cuff links while they're working. We don't ask physicians who toil in bodily fluids all day long to look like they're on a cat walk. And we don't expect gym teachers to be wearing flared pants and form fitting shirts as they play, "Red Light, Green Light."

So what's with all the pressure to make at-home parents feel as though they need to look like fashion models, particularly when their children are young and they too dabble daily in dirt, bodily fluids and physical activities (also known as chasing toddlers down to make sure they don't eat rocks or trash)?

I spent the bulk of my time today working at my computer while sitting in yoga pants and a ragged, gray waffle shirt (yes, again with the gray . . . it used to be the new black). When I looked at the clock, I realized that I didn't have much time left before I had to leave to pick up all three kids from school (in two different schools mind you) and race over to that same gymnastics school where I'm certain that same magazine chastising moms for wearing sweatpants resides. And I caved. Out came the makeup, the flared jeans, the name brand sweater and the hair up-do. Perfume even.

What a sucker I am.

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

I feel bad for Jennifer Garner

By Meredith

The former kick-butt TV spy accompanied her actor hubby to a movie premiere recently, and a single image from the event sparked an online discussion of whether she was pregnant or just fleshy.

Online rumblings about whether Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes actually had a child -- and whether the whole pregnancy was a fake -- degraded into a dissection of photos of Holmes and a debate about whether the belly glimpse in one of the paparazzi shots showed actual skin or a prosthetic pregnancy bump.

Hapless Britney Spears is mercilessly tracked wherever she goes, her every gesture made when carrying her baby -- even stumbling and nearly dropping her child -- is recorded.

Putting aside the fact that these folks are celebrities who need a certain amount of exposure in order to sell their products (themselves, their movies, TV shows, CDs, etc.), they are parents. They are real flesh and blood people. With feelings.

Now I'm just as interested in entertainment news as the next person, but what I despise is the deconstruction, the piece-by-piece demolition and examination of those who dare to earn their living via the entertainment arts.

I cannot imagine what it's like to be pregnant, to go through all the different stages of pregnancy while the entire world watches and scrutinizes. You venture out of the house, lift your arm and *gasp* inadvertently reveal that you have stretch marks. The entertainment media complex them starts musing over when you'll have surgery to repair your professional career.

You bring your child out of the house and stumble a bit while maneuvering the child out of her stroller. The whole world then discusses what a bumbling parent you are.

You start losing your pregnancy weight, and major magazines judge your progress.

When I was pregnant, there were plenty of "bad" fashion days and plenty of accidental public exhibitions of my stretch marks. When my children were babies, I was plenty awkward with them on occasion as I tried to move them from car seat to stroller and back. But I was lucky. No one was around to mock me for every mistake. No one was musing over whether I'd eaten a bit too much take-out, or whether I was pregnant again (not that I ever heard about anyway).

So why can't we just give these fellow parents some space? Sure, critique their professional work products -- their shows, music, interviews, etc. -- but let them and their families live in peace. Can't we?

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Crayons, markers and glue - oh my!

By Meredith

When my family recently got home from our vacation, we had two letters waiting for us in the huge pile of mail. Both contained lists.

The first list was entitled, "Second Grade Supply List," required supplies:

• Markers, 12 Mr. Sketch -- UNSCENTED.
• 24 count crayons.
• 12 count colored pencils.
• Scissors-1-pointed Fiskars.
• 1 binder-3 ring, 1 inch, insertable front.
• 6 glue sticks.
• 1 bottle Elmer's glue 4 oz.
• 24 count #2 pencils.
• 3 block erasers.
• 4 pocket folders (1 red, 1 green, 1 blue, 1 yellow).
• Pencil case or box.
• Letter sized clipboard.

Optional supplies for the second grade classroom: Thin markers, double-sided tape, zipper closure bags, photo paper for inkjet printer, tissues, and card stock paper-white, cream, brightly colored.

The second supply list was for my kindergartener's class and the items included: 2 boxes of thin line markers, 2 boxes of thick line markers, crayons, colored pencils, 1 set of washable water color paint, 6  glue sticks, 1 bottle of washable glue (4-6 oz.), 6 primary pencils (such as Sanford American Jumbo or equivalent), 6 no. 2 pencils, 2 sturdy pocket folders without clasps (1 blue, 1 red) and a half-inch, 3 ring binder.

And we've yet to receive the third supply list for the other second grader in the house.

Now, is it just me, or do these lists sound a bit excessive? What about families on limited incomes, they're REQUIRED in a public school to buy all this stuff? You have to buy a particular brand of scissors?

The problem is either: That public school systems (and my kids attend a good one) have insufficient funding for supplies and make the teachers buy supplies or ask their students' families to buy the materials, OR teachers are coming up with unnecessarily specific supply lists for their classes to do extra-special class projects.

I suspect it's some derivation of the first hypothesis. I don't want teachers having to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets (they don't get paid nearly enough to do so), but what I want to know is when shopping for school supplies become so involved, so much more than just buying a new set of pencils and eraser?

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

In Sickness and In Bugs

By Meredith

When the local school, where you have all three of your children enrolled, has a lice outbreak, it's hard to keep your cool.

When you've just finished doing yoga -- something you haven't done in months because of work deadlines, illnesses, etc. -- and your Zen moment is shattered by a telephone call from your kids' school nurse informing you that the head of one of your beloved children has become infested with insects, it's difficult not to literally flinch and scream. (Like "Twist and Shout," only a darker and angrier version. Sans the musical accompaniment.)

When you're on the telephone with your pediatrician's office, double-checking what needs to be done not only to treat the infested family member, but to prevent infestation of the remainder of your posse, it's a challenge not to keep saying, "I can't  believe this. This is sooo disgusting."

When you're in the pharmacy prior to picking up the louse-headed child, slinking around the shelves and praying no one you know sees you buying lice-be-gone products, it's hard to maintain eye contact with the store clerk who you're convinced is going to wipe down her hands and the counter with disinfectant the minute you're out of sight. (That's what you'd do.)

When you're in the school nurse's office and she's showing you what a nit looks like while it's attached to the hair on YOUR SWEET CHILD'S HEAD, and you spy a live insect come crawling out of the hair and creep across the child's forehead, it's difficult not to shriek.

When you're taking the child -- who looks ashamed even though the kid did nothing wrong except attend a school where an outbreak occurred -- out to the car and you're trying not to touch the child for fear of contracting the insects yourself, it's a challenge to try to smile and to reassure the little one that everything will be fine. And do so convincingly.

When you're in the bathroom, after having dumped the lice-killing shampoo onto the child's head and you're washing out insect carcasses from your offspring's hair, it's hard not to gag.

When you've spent literally hours and hours combing through a child's hair and picking or cutting nits from the thousands upon thousands of strands, and your back is aching and you're really, really frustrated because you had a million other things to do, it's difficult to be patient and understanding when the child complains of being bored.

When you're wildly stripping sheets off of everyone's beds, boiling and disinfecting everything, quarantining rooms and vacuuming every surface in your home, it's a challenge not to make the infected child feel like a pariah, particularly when that child is told to stay away from the other two kids and to keep off the sofa.

When you have to tell neighbors, family and acquaintances about the infestation -- so they can do their own hair checks or avoid visiting your home -- it's hard not to feel dirty.

But after days and days of getting to know every inch of everyone in your family's hair as you carefully comb through the strands (and feel phantom itches on your own head), it's not difficult to realize that this soon shall pass.

And it's not even a challenge to let your child know that, while everybody was skeeved out by this, you will always be there. In sickness, and in bugs. Even if you are grimacing.

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Poor Sports

by Meredith

On the night of the first 2006 meeting between Major League Baseball arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, my eldest son spent the early part of the evening alone in my bedroom watching the game.

A pariah.

Why? Because he’s a Yankees fan. When the hometown team, the Red Sox, are not playing the Yankees, my son Jonah is a Sox fan. But when the Yankees are playing Boston, it’s the Gothamists who get his fandom, much to my, my husband’s, my father’s, my father-in-law’s, my brother’s and certainly my grandfather rolling-over-in-his-grave’s dismay.

If the family openly cheers for the Sox -- as we do during all the other games we watch on TV throughout the season -- my seven-year-old first grader makes a terrible face, as if we’d somehow injured him, and buries himself in the sofa. “Stop it!” he yells, trying to hold back tears. I just don’t understand, and neither does my less-than-understanding husband (less-than-understanding only when it comes to his offspring rooting for the evil George Steinbrenner enterprise).

Jonah's love affair with the Yankees made sense in 2003 when the Yankees, winner of 26 World Series championships, crushed the hearts of all of Red Sox Nation by beating the Sox in the American League Championship Series, in the seventh game, in extra innings, with a walk-off homerun. Sox fans were devastated and some pointed to that 1918 Babe Ruth curse thing as being responsible. (The backstory: In 1918 the Boston Red Sox sold off Ruth to the Yankees for a pittance. Ruth “cursed” the Sox and they never won another World Series . . . until 2004 in the most historic comeback in sports history, against the Yankees, but more on that in a second.)

In 2003, as the Yankees played on and Jonah watched sad Sox fans lament what could’ve been done differently, something began to marinate in his little head. During the spring of 2004, a then-neighbor of ours played for a Little League team named the Yankees. So, between the vision of happy Yankees fans and the neighbor kid he so idolized playing for the Yankees, Jonah declared himself a Yankees fan who would cheer for the Red Sox when not rooting for New York.

Did I mention we live in the Boston area?

But since 2004, when the Red Sox came back from losing three consecutive games in the American League Championship Series to the Yankees and won four games to get to the World Series (which they won by the way) and the Yankees fandom thing doesn't make sense anymore. And it's been a very, very rough time for Jonah. It continues to be rough every time Boston and New York face one another. It became even trickier when Jonah’s favorite Red Sox player, Johnny Damon, voluntarily left town to play for the Yankees and everyone in Boston declared Damon a traitor.

The first time that player Damon was up at bat and was on the receiving end of some vigorous booing (he did get some cheers), Jonah got upset as my husband and I hid our smirks. When Damon hit a fly ball into the outfield for the first out, everyone in our house cheered, except for Jonah, who covered himself with a blanket. Eventually, he withdrew to my bedroom so he could watch the game by himself. The lone Yankees fan.

I wish I could be a better sport about this. But come on. I’m a Sox fan. I still tell Jonah I’m sad for him when the Yankees lose, but I’m not sorry for the Yankees.

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Committed

by Meredith

I’m not a Type-A, perfectionist kinda mom.

I’m not always dressed to impress.

I’m not always in the best of moods.

I'm not always as patient with my kids as I should be.

I don't volunteer as tirelessly or selflessly as other moms I know.

But I try.

Being a guilt-susceptible person – I’m hyper-sensitive to guilt – I try to volunteer to help out with various activities and organizations when I can. However there comes a time when I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, when my little bits of charity here, my little offerings of labor there, add up until I feel like I just want to go back to bed and curl up for a long springtime nap.

But no, I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn on to coach my 7-year-old daughter’s soccer team on Saturday mornings. I can’t forget to download and review the soccer drills from youth soccer web sites so I can run them with the assistant coach. (Drills? What drills? Do I really even know what I’m doing on the soccer field other than offering up my time and energy to try to inspire a group of girls to do their best and show them that women can coach too?)

Then I really should be on hand to help out my husband who volunteered to coach our preschooler’s soccer team on Saturday mornings, immediately following my daughter’s drills and scrimmage at a nearby soccer field. If I’m not there to watch the little man aimlessly kick the ball around, he’ll be crushed.

Then there are those baseball games. My husband’s also a coach for our seven-year-old son’s baseball team. (We just couldn’t say, “No” to any of our three kids when it came to coaching them, and showing that we care, idiots that we are.) Two games and a practice per week. Just for the baseball. For first graders. Gotta help out the husband with team organization because the husband's work schedule is hectic. Gotta help with the baseball raffle ticket sales.

Oh, and I can’t forget that I’m supposed to be the “Mystery Reader” at my daughter’s class tomorrow afternoon. (I was the “Mystery Reader” in her twin brother’s class last week, though he told me he didn’t think the book I chose to read was very entertaining to his fellow first graders. My four-year-old preschooler has been after me, hounding me about when I’m going to show up at his class to read, like the “other mommies” who bring in the food and celebrate various events in class with the children.)

Then there’s that marquee in front of the school. I volunteered to change the letters on the sign each month according to the PTO’s specifications, thinking that by volunteering to do that on my own time (so I can attend to the work I do from home), I’d still be contributing since I can’t make the PTO meetings. But why does it seem like the sign changing always coincides with one of my work deadlines?

And the solicitations keep coming: To volunteer for a spring carnival or for another in a series of special days in my kids’ schools, to help with a school fund raising event, to assist in the religious education classes at the Universalist Unitarian Church my husband and I are thinking about joining. Meanwhile, both my husband and I have work, two ailing grandmothers we need to visit who live an hour and half drive away, a Passover dinner to host at our house for 16, an Easter gathering to which we need to contribute (“Hello, Bakers R Us, can you whip me up some Easter confections?”) and a little thing called income taxes to figure out. Wait, and is that Mother’s Day on the horizon?

Ever feel buried by commitments? Like life goes by in a blur of activities that you're missing your kids' childhoods? Sometimes I wish I weren’t so guilt-prone. Then I think I’d nap more. And learn the word, "No."

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

15 questions from the asylum

By Meredith

In no particular, discernable, reasonable order:

1. When will I ever feel as though, as far as this parenting gig goes, I know what I'm doing?

2. Twenty to 30 years from now, will my kids be telling a therapist that they feel that their privacy has been violated because their mother wrote about their lives in columns and on her blog?

3. Speaking of which, why does the preschooler insist on: a) Spraying toilet seats with urine multiple times a day and b) Clogging the toilets at least twice a week with copious amounts of toilet paper even though his bum-bum still has some, uh, shall we say "waste" on it?

4. How do you prepare your kids for the imminent death of a family member while you yourself feel heart broken?

5. Why does it seem like, despite your best attempts to remember and cajole your children to remember, school library books are almost always returned late and you get a series of "reminder" notes sent home?

6. Why do we go weeks and weeks without invitations to birthday parties and then, BAM! in one week, your kids get a half-dozen invitations that will tie you up for the next six weeks?

7. Why do children tire of their "favorite foods" just AFTER you've bought an enormous caseload of that food at the bulk foods store?

8. Is it some sort of weird karmic payback thing that if your kids are angels one day, the next day they'll act as though possessed by evil trolls?

9. Why does it seem like there's some sort of celebration or party every six weeks or so (not to mention days off or vacation times) in school that requires me to bake something or use glitter and glue?

10. Do you think that you could still be a butt-kicking spy, like Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) on "Alias" (it comes back for its final episodes in April!), even while you're pregnant?

11. Why do we care so much what pregnant or new mom celebrities do, wear or buy, given the fact that we don't have their seemingly unlimited financial resources, personal staffs, or stylish images to keep up for our adoring public and entertainment media?

12. Why do TV commercials involving parents and kids -– particularly if they start with a young child and then move onto scenes where the child is all grown up –- make me want to weep?

13. What prompts my 7-year-old son to have his semi-frequent, God-awful night terrors, where he screams gibberish, flails and cries incessantly?

14. Are there really any "Bree Van de Camps" out there in some "perfect" housewife world, and if so, why?

15. Will I ever get the chance to see the struggling new mom Hope Steadman from "thirtysomething" on TV (or DVD) while I'm still in my 30s? Come on, if "The Greatest American Hero" can come out in DVD, why not "thirtysomething?"

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Lottery fever

By Meredith

We've got Lottery Fever here. And I ain't talkin' PowerBall.

It's full-day kindergarten lottery fever. My town is having a public drawing of the names of children whose parents hope they'll be selected to fill the full-day kindergarten slots for the 2006-07 school year. (It'll even be broadcast on the town cable station.)

And I'm having mixed feelings.

Probably about three-quarters of me is excited -- celebratory almost -- hopeful that my 4-year-old's name will be drawn. Even though I didn't send Casey's older siblings to full-day kindergarten (they didn't seem ready to me) I think full-day could be good for my younger child. Or maybe, the dirty little secret, is that it could be good for me too.

Right now, when he comes home from his half days of pre-school, he wants me to be his full-time play date until his brother and sister come home. He seems like he wants to literally zip himself up in my sweaters and be physically attached to me all day long.

I do play with the little man, but not all the time. Why? I've got stuff, anything from work (paid and unpaid) to errands (meaningless stuff like, say, buying food to feed my family). I also think it's important for children to entertain themselves and not have an adult program all their fun all of the time, so I try to encourage Casey to come up with his own pretend games he can do near me.

But when I try to strike a balance –- say we play for an hour and then we do our own things side-by-side, me working on the computer or reading, him playing in my office –- he's never satisfied with half-measures. Casey gets irritated that I'm not responding to his non-stop stream of dialog, that I'm not immediately recognizing the amazing pile of Rescue Heroes he has made on the floor.

Then he starts doing things to gain my negative attention (crawling into my lap and banging on the computer keys), moving furniture around (plush Elmo chairs, footstools, kitchen chairs), banging Matchbox cars into the door jams. Then I get frustrated. Then my Nice Mommy tone melts away. And nobody has fun.

I know he just wants to be with me. To hug me. To have me cherish everything that he does. I know that I'll miss this when he's no longer so needy. I know the day will arrive when he simply wants me to go away. But right now, here in the present, on too many days, I feel suffocated by the need.

If he went to full-day kindergarten, not only could it work out well for my work schedule, but, once the kids are home from school, I (hopefully) will have the bulk of my day's stuff done so I'd be free to spend time with all three of my kids, to help them with homework, to read them books, to play goofy games in the family room. We'd all be much happier, at least that's what I argue, and my littlest boy would (hopefully) feel less pushed aside.

Casey seems to love school. His teachers say he's having fun. He greets me with a beaming smile when I pick him up and he practically tackles me in a bear hug. But, when I think about those bear hugs, that remaining one-quarter of me becomes tentative about his name being chosen for full-day kindergarten. Will it be too much for him? Will he be unhappy? Am I making the wrong choice?

And then, I ask myself: Is this choice more about me than it is about him?

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.

Sick days

By Meredith

How can you parent while your head is in the toilet? When you feel like ramming your skull through a wall because it's throbbing? When your entire body feels like it has been flattened by your mini-van?

I recently went away for the weekend to attend a wedding with my husband –- we NEVER go away –- and, on the way home, I developed a nasty stomach flu. By the time we got home (I’ll spare you the gory traveling-while-sick-to-your-stomach details), I lurched to my bedroom and stayed there for 38 hours, other than the graphic moments when I dragged my sorry behind into the bathroom.

My husband, as is his wont, swung into action. Quickly, he covered me with blankets, loaded my nightstand with water, tissues, ran out to buy Gatorade and ginger ale, and kept the kids at bay. (He even used the digital video recorder to record the Golden Globes and the arrival show for me, even though he thinks these things are dumb.) I heard nothing from anyone, save for for a few incidents of pediatric foot stomping followed by my husband’s admonition, “Shhh! Mom’s sleeping.”

The following day, when my head was throbbing and I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours (and had no desire to do so), he took all three kids (who had no school that day due to a “professional day”) to work with him. By the time they came home, they brought heart-breakingly sweet cards they’d made me. Full of hearts. Crayoned images of kids with their arms outstretched. The word “love” everywhere. After bestowing the cards and armloads of hugs upon me, my husband took them out of the room and let me sleep.

The next day, when I could lift my head without crying, I got up and helped get the kids ready for school (thank GOD for school). I pulled on the most comfortable sleeping clothes I could -- under extenuating circumstances these would arguably be considered “exercise clothes,” therefore eligible for wearing outside of the house -- expecting that I'd be bringing the kids to school. But my husband said he’d go in late and take them. I would only have to pick them up when they were done. I was so happy, for a sick person.

It’s times like these when I wonder –- and wonder aloud -– how parents without partners survive sick days. I pray that they have safety nets of people to help them out: grandparents, siblings, close friends. We wouldn't have gotten through an incident two years ago without my mom, who had stayed overnight to babysit the kids so my husband and I could go out to see Jerry Seinfeld in concert. The next day, every member of my immediate family got the stomach bug, my daughter so badly that she was hospitalized. My mother stayed (and miraculously didn’t get the bug) while my husband stayed in the hospital with my daughter, and I was useless in my bed. Without her, we couldn’t have managed.

Without my husband, I wouldn’t be able to be sitting up at this computer writing semi-intelligent thoughts.

We all need help. And a safety net. Because sick days happen.

And ya never know when.

Meredith O'Brien is a journalist who lives with her family in the Boston area.