Sick days. Isn’t it funny that once you become a single parent that term no longer applies to you? I have always been fortunate enough to work for companies that provide a generous time off benefit, but still, I never took real vacations. I was too busy being the caretaker to vacation.
As a single parent I knew that any paid time I had needed to be hoarded in case Hailey got sick. First, you can’t send them to day care when they’re sick and you don’t want to leave them at home alone when they are sick either. So you take the day or days off.
It’s not just when they are sick, checkups, dentist’s appointments, school meetings, school activities, there is always something that will require taking time off. I know for us, money was always tight; taking time off without pay was not an option, so I learned to save those days for emergencies.
If I was sick, I went to work. Co workers would give me a hard time about coming to work and getting everyone else sick, but I really didn’t have a choice, my time off needed to be used for Hailey.
My poor daughter learned very young that when you say you are sick, you better be sick. Hailey knew the only reasons she would be allowed to miss school were vomiting or fevers. There were many times she would call me from school in the morning and tell me she didn’t feel well, I would always ask her to stick it out and call me at lunch time, if she still felt sick, I would come and get her. That usually worked, most of the time the call at lunchtime was to tell me she was feeling better.
Sometimes I guess I carried it too far. Hailey called me one day and said she hurt her hand playing volleyball. I asked if she could move it and how bad it hurt. She assured me it was fine, the teacher just felt like she should call. About an hour later the school called to tell me they thought Hailey’s hand was broken.
I felt horrible! I picked her up, took her for X-rays, fortunately nothing was broken and she was back to school the next day. Hailey assured me that it wasn’t a big deal; the teachers blew it out of proportion. I watched my daughter explain this and wasn’t sure how to feel. I had taught my baby girl to tough it out and in this case there could have been something wrong. One the other hand, this kid of mine has an incredible work ethic, has never called in sick to work and has missed fewer than two days of school a year, I guess that counts for something!