I can’t be the only one who needs to get good and angry, like righteously pissed off, if I ever stand a chance of scrubbing under the sink.
It all started yesterday afternoon when I pulled into my laneway parking spot with Mary. Life was good right then. I had a trunk load of fresh groceries and a reasonable expectation of where my children would be attending school for the foreseeable future. Talk about not appreciating what you have until it’s gone.
I then proceeded to get out of my car and right into a squabble with a neighbour about laneway parking rights. I was no sooner in the door with a whiny three-year-old and a heap of groceries when the school called. Oh no, I thought, who’s cracked their head open this time?
But it wasn’t about that. Apparently there’s been a slight change to the priority levels of new registrants who have siblings enrolled in specialty programs in out-of-catchment schools at the board level. That’s a great big, fancy way of saying Mary might not be able to go to the same school as her brother and sister next year. Say what!?
(Backstory in a nut shell: We moved just barely out of catchment after Colum was already registered at the school but are still close enough to essentially walk across the street and back into the catchment area where the kids can take a bus the rest of the way. Siblings of students who already attend were always accepted and we had no problem registering Irene. We feel a deep sense of belonging in this school community. I have never even laid eyes on the school that is technically in our catchment area because it is actually further removed from where we live.)
The best part is that I was hearing about this for the first time one month before the JK registration date. Because when you have major, life-altering decisions to make, it’s always fun to do that under enormous pressure during the holidays.
All afternoon and evening, my anxiety was mounting as I helped the two older kids with their homework and faced the distinct possibility that I might have to homeschool Mary, thus teaching her nothing at all and certainly never assigning her homework. I never expected a real-life study in the efficacy of unschooling versus a Catholic, French Immersion education to unfold in my own family, and yet here we were. I helped Irene look up vocabulary words in the French/English dictionary while Colum practiced piano. Then I handed Mary a toilet brush. You know your role, Cinderella.
After the kids went to bed, there was nothing left to distract me from my own simmering indignation. The injustice of this last-minute rule change swelled up within my chest. The impossible choices suddenly put before me — have my baby go to a whole different school from her siblings, pull the other two out of a school community they love, or somehow find a way to move back into the catchment area in time for registration — brought my blood to a boil. And the school administration is on our side!
The rage was slow to burn, but once it got going I was filled with a righteous, fiery anger that only knows one outlet: deep cleaning.
Unable to take meaningful action to fix things at 10pm, I stalked about the kitchen. I unloaded the dishwasher. I loaded it up again. I threw on loads of laundry. I took everything off the counters and scoured the far corners. I rearranged the pantry. I washed underneath the sink. I swept the floor and then got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed it to a high shine.
When I was finally spent, I dragged myself to bed, fell asleep and allowed my anger to recharge. With any luck, this uncertainty will drag on long enough for me to clean the entire house.