Spring Cleaning

My spring break has just begun and I have not felt this unburdened since August. Christmas break had its own unique stresses and it took place in the midst of the worst of the pandemic. Now I am fully vaccinated and the weather is improving. Just this weekend I converted my screened-in back porch from a winter storage space to a warm weather hangout spot. 

While doing so yesterday I couldn't help but to think of the last time I cleaned the porch. It was at the start of quarantine, and back then I told myself I would have to keep busy around the house as a way to keep from losing my mind. I didn't just tidy up the porch, I gave it a ridiculously deep cleaning well beyond my usual standards. At that stage of quarantine the enormity of the situation gave me a kind of manic energy that found its expression in some pretty unlikely ways.

A year later that spirit is pretty much gone. I'm tired, both in body and soul. My job and my life have become one constant triage with constant fires to put out. There was a sort of excitement of rising to the challenge last year when I would have to get up from my computer after teaching a Zoom class to get lunch on for my kids while frantically responding to students taking an asynchronous class. Now when I have to do this I wish so hard that it would just finally end. 

It's all become a blur, day after day of working 11 hours at my job while tutoring my children and cooking and cleaning through it all. Except for the two days a week that I have to ride the train into the city and come home after it's done dead on my feet and sometimes still needing to cajole my children into doing their homework.

My spring break couldn't come soon enough because I think I was getting close to the point of exhaustion. That's usually the case even during a normal school year. And like in those years the time from then to summer is the final stretch, a thought that sustains many a teacher through April. I am trying to use spring break not just to clean my house, but to clean out my mind too. Maybe some time sitting on my back porch will help with that.