By Julie Barnes

At first glance, one might expect the math community and extended academic community to simply be a great place to go to for advice directly related to our careers. But in the past two years, I have discovered that it is far more than that. 

I’m in that season of my life where children essentially become parents to their own parents.  Every situation is different, but it is always heart wrenching and confusing. In my case, after my father passed away in 2017, I was helping my mom navigate life alone from three states away while her mental abilities were declining. I’m glad that I shared my struggles concerning this within the math community because what happened next is still astonishing to me. I found more support from the academic community than I could have expected from my own small family. Here are a few highlights.

Early on this journey, I found myself in a deep discussion with someone after one of my presentations at an MAA meeting. Somehow elder care came up, and he arranged for me to talk with his wife about how she had dealt with a similar situation. Also, a more senior member of our community met with me several times at national conferences and later via Zoom to talk through my concerns. At the same time, a colleague from Asheville that I have interacted with at local MAA events introduced me to an employee from a senior community; this provided me with insider advice. When my mom finally agreed to move to Asheville, my colleagues at Western Carolina University (WCU) drove an hour away to help unload my mom’s U-Haul. (I live in a rural mountain region, and the best senior living options are an hour away.) My brother was stunned by this level of assistance from colleagues since he has never seen a work community volunteer so generously.  

I thought that my life would return to some semblance of normalcy once my mother was in a senior community, but I was quite naive. Through a sequence of my mom’s health issues, I was finding myself constantly driving the hour to her community or handling her medical issues long distance while trying to ready her house in Florida for sale. I relied on math connections twice while I was in Florida: once a WCU colleague drove over at 6 am to deal with my mom, and once a colleague that I know from my MAA section took my mom to a doctor’s appointment for me.  Neither of these women knew my mom. Around the time Mom’s house sold, Mom needed more help than she could get in her senior community, so we moved her to Assisted Living. It was still an hour away from me. After the move, I again was receiving numerous calls from the facility wanting me over there immediately, and I had to rely on a couple of math colleagues from my MAA section who were able to be there in five minutes. This situation was not sustainable, so I moved Mom in with me and very quickly developed a unique care plan for her that allowed me to continue doing my job. 

Nothing in elder care ever seems to go quite as planned. In March, Mom fell and fractured her hip. This resulted in her having surgery in our local, small-town hospital. Who would have guessed that her surgeon is cousins with someone I have worked with closely on a national MAA program? Not only did this mean getting encouraging text messages from a mathematician before surgery, but in addition, the surgeon showed me a text message from his cousin while we were with my mom in pre-op.  

Even though the hip surgery went very well, Mom’s rehab was a disaster. I am currently unable to leave my mother alone because of her dementia and because she needs bathroom help. At this point, I’m essentially a self-trained CNA. I also have a team of people who assist her, making it possible for me to do my job. Still, the flexibility of my department has been essential to me continuing to do what matters most to me in my career —teach my students to the best of my ability. Every once in a while, I have needed someone to proctor an exam or sub for a random class or to reschedule office hours. Even my students have been incredibly supportive, many sharing their grandma stories with me. I also have weekly Zoom meetings with friends from graduate school who are now located in three different time zones. One of those friends even physically came with me to Florida to pack up Mom and move her to Asheville. In addition, I have found a ton of support from a collection of mathematicians from across the country that I was able to connect with at MathFest.

I’m still in the throes of the daily details involved with elder care and all it entails. However, when I look back at what has happened so far, I feel like the math community has seriously taken the place of jobs typically performed by extended families. It reminds me of several more personal conversations that have occurred on the Project NExT list over the years, and how willing Fellows were to help. Project NExT, though, is known to be a strong community, and maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised at their willingness to share ideas. The people who came to my aid as described in this blog include well-known senior mathematicians, mathematics instructors with master’s degrees, Project NExT Fellows, and even a middle school homeschool math teacher – a much broader segment of the MAA which is still willing to share their lives with others. I guess my biggest takeaway now is a reminder that we have an amazing community in the MAA, and we should never hesitate to reach out for help. I am extremely grateful for our math community.

Julie Barnes is a professor at Western Carolina University in the North Carolina mountains. When she is not pretending to be a CNA for her mother or mediating between her cats and her mom’s cat, she enjoys hiking and playing racquetball.