I felt guilty at first about the solace I took from work.I often wondered what the other mothers thought of me,taking my work clothes to the hospital, showering in the parents' stall after a long night in which we'd heard the cries of all our children.

Eventually, I realized that getting away was good not only for me but for my son and daughter. When my son first became sick, the doctors told me I had to be strong for him. I could not show fear. Somehow I also had to convey confidence to my daughter, to help her endure what had befallen us.

Although I feared that working might be selfish,I could see that it actually seemed reassuring to my children,a sign that we could,for moments at least,return to our routines. Working was a pledge that life could go on.It was a statement of hope.

Once again, as I had so often realized since I had become a mother, I understood how dangerous are the " shoulds" of motherhood, how destructive is society's insistence on one right way to be a good mother. Too many experts tell us that good mothers do not abandon their children to baby sitters. Good mothers prove their devotion by never leaving their children. Yet such rules ignore the truth that mothers are not all alike, that there are many ways to give children what they need and deserve. The rules tell mothers how to act without taking into account how mothers feel and how those feelings will affect their children.

If I had followed the rules, I would have succumbed to terror and failed my children. In the end, this ordeal eased my guilt about leaving my son's side at times. I realized that I, like many others who care for sick people, needed somewhere else to go once in a while to draw breath and find meaning before returning to the work of nursing.For me, my job was that place.For others, it might be someplace else.

My son is recovering now, but I am still too close to his illness to understand fully what lessons I can learn, what meaning I can wrest, from this experience. All I can say is that working when my child was so sick might look wrong from the outside, but on the inside, it helped keep me sane. I grew less intimidated by the other mothers. I allowed myself to see that I was no less dedicated. We were all caring for our children, each in our own way.