NEW ORLEANS — Editor's note: Sofia Voulgarakis Hackett is usually the producer of the Eyewitness News at 5. For the time being, she's an unexpected stay-at-home mom, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. And like many of you, she's having to navigate a new normal.
My 7-year-old daughter, who hasn’t been feeling well, walked upstairs to my room right after my alarm went off at 5:30 this morning. She wanted me to come downstairs and snuggle.
Normally, I'd have to say, “Sorry, sweetie. It’s time to wake up for the day.”
Normally, I would already be up and dressed, making my lunch and then waking the kids up to get dressed and eat breakfast. We would get in the car, with a lot of extra nudges, and head to school with me screaming for them to be quiet so I could concentrate while driving.
Normally, I'd drive to work, feeling like I just fought a long, hard battle before the day even began.
Today, though, wasn’t normal.
I gave my daughter an extra hug before I started my long, hard battle away from the newsroom for now and just treasured my time with her while her big brother was still asleep.
I’m a news producer at WWL-TV, and my normal day is very organized. I do certain things at certain times. Today was anything but organized.
I tried to keep the peace, but they acted like “taking a break” was a regular part of their day at school. They tried to pull one over on me, but I’m way smarter than they think.
“There will be no breaks! Finish everything early!” The moment I slipped away, closed my office door and tried to transcribe a live press conference, a party unfolded. Thank goodness I had headphones to drown out the screaming.
Every once in a while, I had to threaten them with taking away all of the fun --forever, if they didn’t stop fighting.
They didn’t quite believe me.
Diary of an unexpected stay-at-home mom: We're all in this together
It’s not an easy task to get my kids to sit down and do all of their work as I tried to do my own. I'm of the mindset of getting things done and having fun afterwards. They, on the other hand, want to take breaks, eat snacks, and go run around my front yard like it's the uninhabited island from “Lord of the Flies.”
I’m trying to do a balancing act, and I’m not sure I’m doing a great job, but I’m trying really hard not let my co-workers down.
I’m trying really hard not to let our viewers down.
I’m also trying really hard not to let my kids down.
I told them none of this is normal. I’m normally sitting at my desk, preparing for my newscast. I’m normally joking around with my co-workers in between shows. I’m normally not here, and I actually won’t be here like this every day. They still don’t really get it.
What I have come to realize over the last few days is that we all have to get used to a new normal for everything, and we have to do our best to keep things slightly normal for our families -- especially the kids.
In the long run, though, we also have to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect.
It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to laugh. It’s okay to get frustrated. We are all human, and it’s 100 percent normal to feel these emotions during an international emergency.
Even though the future is uncertain right now, I have come to realize the best thing we can all do is to just do our best, and one day, we’ll all look back at this and say, “I survived, and I’m better for it.”
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