Getting sick when you live overseas can make you realise just how much of your old support system you left behind. It’s not simply that your family lives far away. It’s that when something goes wrong, the people who would normally step in and help can’t physically be there.
Our family discovered that the hard way recently when all four of us got COVID.
At one point, my wife Nikki and I were both completely wiped out while our two daughters, aged ten and seven, were sick as well. When one parent gets sick, the other can usually pick up the slack. When both parents are sick at the same time, things get considerably more complicated.
The kids still needed feeding and looking after. There was washing to do, food to organise and a house that somehow continued producing dirty dishes despite nobody having the energy to do anything.
For the first time in eight years of living in America, I found myself seriously wondering: what are we actually supposed to do if we both get too sick to manage this?
Sick Children Have a Remarkable Ability to Recover When There’s Something to Fight About
Thankfully, our girls are old enough to do some things for themselves. They can get a drink, find a snack and entertain themselves without constant supervision.
They are not, however, old enough to look after two very sick parents.
They also demonstrated a fascinating feature of childhood illness. One minute, one of them would be lying on the couch looking miserable and telling us how terrible she felt. Twenty minutes later, both girls would be running around like crazed squirrels fighting over the television remote.
Apparently COVID symptoms can temporarily disappear when your sister changes the channel.
Then the fight would end and one of them would return to the couch.
“Dad, I don’t feel well.”
Neither did I, but unlike them, I hadn’t just completed a 100 yard dash through the house.
At one point their continued demands inspired me to write a Shakespearean proclamation for the household:
A plague hath descended upon this house, and both Mother and Father lie stricken, weak of limb and weary of spirit. Yet the young heirs show no mercy.
If thou hungerest, seek thee the pantry. If thou thirstest, journey forth unto the kitchen.
Cry havoc, and let slip the children.
It summed up the week surprisingly well.
When Cooking Becomes Too Much Effort
Food was one of the first things to fall apart.
We relied on takeaway far more than we normally would because neither of us had the energy to cook. There’s a particular level of sickness where having ingredients in the fridge becomes irrelevant. Chicken and vegetables might technically constitute dinner, but only if someone has enough energy to turn them into dinner.
We didn’t.
Delivery drivers became our humanitarian aid workers. Leave the food at the front door, retreat to a safe distance and we’ll retrieve the supplies when able.
I also managed to place an Instacart grocery order while exhausted and sleep deprived. When it arrived, I started unpacking things I had absolutely no memory of ordering.
Scallion noodles?
Apparently so.
There were several other random purchases that made perfect sense to whichever version of me had been scrolling through Instacart at the time. It was like receiving a grocery order selected by a stranger, except the stranger was me.
Three Hours of Sleep Felt Like a Luxury Holiday
Sleep became another problem. I went an extraordinary amount of time without getting any meaningful rest because every time I started drifting off, I would cough or wake up uncomfortable.
Eventually I ordered sleep gummies from Amazon and paid extra for expedited same-day delivery.
This was no longer casual online shopping. I needed those gummies.
Amazon cancelled the delivery.
Of all the packages to cancel, this felt personal.
Eventually I remembered that we had some older sleep gummies in the house. They were out of date, which would normally have been enough for me to leave them alone. After that long without sleep, however, the expiration date started looking more like a suggestion.
They worked.
I slept for more than three hours in a row and woke up feeling as though I’d just returned from a two-week wellness retreat.
COVID Cancelled Almost Everything Else
Being sick gradually made our world smaller.
The girls missed school.
Georgia and Brianna missed dance classes.
There wasn’t really a choice. Sending a child with COVID into a dance studio full of other children would have been a spectacularly bad idea.
I had to cancel my own ballroom dancing too. There was absolutely no chance I had enough energy for that. I could barely foxtrot to the bathroom.
Work became difficult for another reason: I had virtually no voice.
A large part of what I do involves YouTube, podcasting and recording. My computer was sitting there, scripts were ready and there were things I wanted to make, but I couldn’t talk without coughing.
It’s a strange frustration when you technically have everything you need to work except the physical ability to do it.
Who Do You Call When Both Parents Are Sick?
At the worst point, I found myself wondering whether there was some kind of government service for families in this situation.
I genuinely didn’t know.
What happens if both parents become too sick to properly care for their children? We weren’t at the point where we couldn’t look after ours, but lying there completely exhausted made me wonder what would happen if we got worse.
Then I realised that if we were living in Canberra, I probably wouldn’t have been thinking about government departments at all.
We would have called Nikki’s mum.
She doesn’t live in Canberra, but I know she would have got in the car and driven there to help us.
That one thought completely changed how I saw the week.
The Invisible Support System You Leave Behind
When people talk about emigrating, they usually understand that they’re leaving family and friends behind. You know you’ll miss birthdays and Christmases. You know you won’t be able to simply pop around for dinner.
What I don’t think I fully understood was that I was also leaving behind a practical support system.
It’s the person who can pick up your children when you can’t. Someone who brings dinner because they know you’re struggling. A grandparent who can watch the kids for a few hours while you sleep.
It doesn’t take much.
If Nikki’s mum had been able to come over, we wouldn’t have expected her to magically fix everything. Just having one healthy adult in the house would have made an enormous difference.
Someone could deal with the girls while we slept, make some food or simply say, “Go to bed. I’ve got this.”
After eight years in America, that was one of the rare occasions when the distance between here and Australia felt enormous.
Technology Can’t Replace Being There
Living overseas today is easier in many ways than it was a generation ago. We can video call family in Australia, send photos instantly and stay involved in each other’s lives from thousands of miles away.
But there are limits.
A video call can’t make dinner. It can’t collect your children from school, go to the shops or sit with the kids while both parents get some desperately needed sleep.
There are moments when emotional closeness isn’t enough. You need someone physically close enough to show up.
Friends can absolutely become part of that support network, but asking a friend to enter your COVID-infested house and take care of your sick children is quite an ask.
Family can be different. Sometimes all you have to say is, “We need help.”
Our Kids Miss That Proximity Too
This experience also made me think about something I rarely consider: our daughters are growing up without grandparents nearby.
They know their grandparents and love them, but they don’t have the everyday version of that relationship where you can simply go to Nan’s for the afternoon or a grandparent can unexpectedly pick you up from school.
To them, that’s completely normal because it’s the only life they’ve known.
During sickness though, I didn’t only wish someone could help Nikki and me. I wished there was another healthy adult nearby for the girls.
They were sick too, despite occasionally transforming into crazed squirrels, and they still needed their parents.
Unfortunately, their parents were operating at about four percent.
I Wasn’t Homesick. I Missed Having Backup.
That was probably the biggest realisation of the whole experience.
I wasn’t lying in bed wishing we could move back to Australia. I wasn’t dreaming about Canberra, Australian food or the places I used to know.
America is home. Our lives are here.
What I missed was having backup.
There’s a difference.
You can love the life you’ve built overseas while recognising that there are things you gave up to build it. You can feel completely at home in your new country and still occasionally wish the people who would drop everything to help you lived a little closer.
Most of the time, I don’t notice the 9,000 miles between us and Australia.
This time I did.
Getting sick reminded me that one of the hardest parts of living overseas isn’t necessarily missing home. Sometimes it’s discovering all the things you never realised home used to do for you.
And I learned one other valuable lesson.
Never place all your faith in same-day Amazon delivery during a plague.
