Sunday, December 29, 2013

2013
A Spoken Word
Frances Stevenson


            2013 was interesting. A mixed bag. I escaped a depression I had been fighting for a while. Quit a job I hated for a year and a half and found love and acceptance in a class of two year olds. Made less money. Got lost in my own head and realized I needed to make a change, got started on the path to self-acceptance. Met a boy, met a less boyish boy who I had known forever, did nothing with either boy. Felt completely alone, fell back into depression and made a vow to stop alienating self. Bought a lot of things I didn’t need. Started working out. Ate more vegetables. Lost some weight. Gained some weight.  Lied, a lot. Drank more water. Got overly upset at a ripped pair of jeans. Bought new jeans. Discovered the incredible power of fairy lights and alcohol. Took more medications. Saw more doctors. Felt sicker, felt healthier. Started flossing, stopped flossing. Enjoyed learning. Enjoyed school. Stopping enjoying school. Met a bully. Tried to ignore bully. Felt smart. Felt stupid at the hands of “friends”. Stopped letting other people define me. Failed. Let my nerdy freak flag fly. Bought A LOT of shoes. Felt bad about throwing things away. Broke things. Was terrible human being. Hated other human beings. Cried. Let a beautiful and cold Sunday pass unencumbered by the outside world. Healed. Drank equal amounts of coffee and tea. Started eating fish again. Tried to stop eating dairy, failed, ate in moderation.  Wrote. Was awkward. Was awkward as hell. Talked to dad more. Felt apart of family, felt nothing like family. Read a lot of books, watched slightly more television.  Joined the growing world of the internet generation, felt less alone. Enjoyed no responsibilities. Waited for 2014.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

A little poem I wrote about the hot muggy weather.

What once was freedom
has become its own sort of captivity
holding on to me and dragging me down with it
down and down
as my heart beats faster and my lungs fill with the unnecessary water
in the air

the cloudless sky and shiny sun
burn as I bike, walk, jog to the nearest entrance

to the sweet freedom of air conditioning. 

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

cozy Saturday mornings
make it hard to wake up
to face the warm light from outside
and leave the warm sheets

the promises of coffee and food
lure
but do not guarantee
feet on cold floors

seasons change
fall, spring, winter
or hot humid summers
but Saturday mornings

hibernate us all 
Cabin Life

            Cabin life is different. One is not obligated, to cook well, or at all, to shower daily, to sleep often, or well.
            Thirty hours without sleep feels like four cups of coffee or a few beers. Saturday mornings mean five am sunrises and instant coffee instead of warm sheets, eggs, bacon.
            Netflix marathons are replaced by cup amplified music and card games only played by the light of a sunset or a flashlight.
            Cabin life is different. Twenty-four hours can feel like a week or a month. New friends like old. Seventeen year olds become eighteen when cute boys smile and jet skis pass by.
            Cabin life means rainbow sunrises over chocolate muffins on rickety docks with pillows and blankets. It means campfires and tummy aches from too much junk food. It means four pm naps in the sun turned into red sunburnt backs, aloe lotion and the promise to use sunscreen tomorrow.
            Cabin life is s’mores over the coals of a fire lit and forgotten hours ago.

            Cabin life is packing up your stuff forgetting a few things, saying goodbye to the lake and the cabin and driving home for work the next morning. 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

A Juxapostion of Lifetimes

My father struggles with the worst storm he ever traveled through. The heavy unforgiving rain beats down and the freezing-cold water makes it hard to breathe. My Dad is late for his shift, fumbling with his rain suit, unwilling to go out in the storm unprotected. The thunder and lightning are dangerous to anyone on the deck but they are moving through a lock and that makes work unavoidable. He pulls his feet to the exterior door pulling on his rain suit, one leg at a time when the whistle blows, loud and angry. He flies out the door half dressed. The rope is tied to a post on the deck, a huge potentially catastrophic mistake. This all-important rope holds the ship to the walls of the lock they are currently moving through and the water level lowers but the boat does not. The heavy tugboat is literally suspended in the air; this will not last for long, the ropes they used were strong but not that strong. My dad curses out the man working before him and quickly unties the rope giving the line some slack, chocking on cold water, his breathe labored. The ship lowers.


I sit in my high school math class staring up at the white bumpy ceiling. The sophmores and juniors around me talking, yelling, playing, the epitome of high schoolers,  as I think about my father’s stories.
Mr. Surver snaps me out of my daze with the start of class. I sit up open up my notebook expecting class to be chaos as usual. Logarithms, awesome. I see Mr. Surver’s blue squiggly handwriting on the Smartboard turn into the blue-green Illinois River as my father stares out at it from the deck of a towboat. I see the tow attached to the barges with ropes and cables pulled as tightly as they can just like my father told me they would be.
I can almost hear the cables snap myself as my father turns around to see all the deckhands curse out the boat that bumped them. The barges push down the river past the tow all on their own.
            “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” says someone, maybe Snake, my father’s roommate. I would kill to know a guy named Snake.
            The cables snapped because another ship bumped into them and the tow had fallen apart. It was a miracle no one had been killed. Cables that thick, moving at that speed, could cut a man in half; it was sheer luck that they were all still alive.
            There was work to be done. All the barges now floating on their own, with no ties to the boat, would have to be caught and reattached. The merchandise in those barges was their paycheck.
            It was only my father’s second trip on the towboat since he had gotten the job in November of ‘82. They were headed towards New Orleans on the Illinois.

In the face of adversity my dad sought out adventure. I think in some ways I looked for adventure in taking extra college classes. To be perfectly honest I’m not really sure why I started. I have the lies I tell other people; college credits, to escape the boredom, to stop being treated like a child. Maybe it was adventure I was looking for.  
           
            “Frances, FRANCES,” Mr. Surver yells, my little trip to dream world suddenly obvious to the entire class. “You want to join us?”
             I sigh, hold up my pen in surrender and wrote down the notes on the board. But a minute later my thoughts slip into the world of daydreams.
            How different my father and I are. I always compared myself to him. I could talk to my mom but I always saw myself as more my father than my mother. But now that I know what he’s been through, what he’s done I can’t help but feel I don’t know him at all. Once again I flashed back to that afternoon when he had told me of his time as a deckhand.

            My father’s job as a deckhand started a year after he graduated college. He had finished his last archelogical dig for the summer and although he had ignored it all summer he knew furthering his education in anthropology would not lead to a job. My great aunt, who lived in St.Louis at the time, suggested deckhand school having connections to the Huffman Towing Company. Coming from an East Coast wealthy family, her idea of towboats was a little romanticized. I think her and the rest of my father’s family were picturing some version of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. In reality there was even more profanity and a lot less romance.
            But he needed the job, or rather a place to go and figure out what to do next. So my dad traveled from Ohio to Arkansas to a deckhand school. The test taking part was easy considering most of the deck hands that came through were not college educated. The physical component was a little harder. He learned to fight boat fires, tie complicated knots and throw heavy rope onto bollards, short metal posts on which rope was attached to a dock a ship. Twelve weeks later he was on his way to St. Louis.

            The bell rang and everyone made their way out of the classroom and into the noisy hallway. The loud noise of two thousand talking students breaks into my thoughts, I quickly pack up my notebook, tablet, and folder, plug my earbuds into my ears and ignore the look of judgment from Mr. Surver as I shuffle out the door.
            I walk through the hallway and into the busy commons, Mat Kearney blasting in my ears drowning out the sound of happy teenagers on their way to fifth hour. I head to the west entrance, flash a smile at the Para at the desk and walk out of the school.
            The brightness of the sun make my eyes blink and dilate, not used to natural light after four hours of florescent light.

The bright light floods through the circular window and my father groans trying to remember the events of the previous night. Snake groans from across the room.
“Dave what the fuck? Close the shades.”
The memories flood back from last night. Snake had woken him up with a plan to sneak of the boat, a forbidden but luring idea. If they were caught they would be fired but the boredom of the same face, hallways and rooms was getting to him and the rest of the crew. I see them sneak past their supervior’s corriders, a league of trampling men whispering and tiptoeing behind my father and Snake. Up the stairs and into the night air, from there they step off the ship and on to land for the first time in weeks. Most of them stumble when their feet hit solid ground, their centers of gravity missing the rocking of the boat.
They weren’t caught, a miracle to say the least. Most of the men came back drunk, even more buoyant versions of themselves, louder and with fewer inhibitions to get in the way. Each man was returned to his room. The smell of beer would take months to leave the ship mixing with the heat of the summer.

I climb into my stifling hot car. I had forgotten to crack the windows that morning, still adjusting to the nice weather. I plug my iPod in, put my broken shades on, put the car in reverse and escape.
Once I am a comfortable distance from the school I roll down my windows, let my hair out of the tight bun it had been confined to and exhale.
As I stop at a red light I thought about my dad’s stories. Will I have stories like that to have my childern? Not the way my life is going right now. Another year of part time high school, part time community college. Three years of nursing school. Maybe a spring break trip abroad. A job, an apartment, bills, adulthood,  everything moved so fast. I had never been brave enough to try new things, with the one exception of becoming a PSEO student but that just meant more school and more stress. I had always been a planner, an organizer. Would I ever be able to run away to Arkansas and become a deckhand?
The light turned green and I turned onto highway seven.

I see my father’s boat turn as it docks in Mississippi, this time with only one piece of cargo to unload, my father. Maybe he hugs some of his shipmates, maybe he hugs Snake, his roommate for the last year. He waves to the boat as it leaves him behind. A plane picks him up at the airport and he flies home. His time as a deckhand has come to an end, a little bit closer to where he is supposed to be.




Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Rewriting Fairytales: Cinderella
            Once upon a time there was a young girl whose mother had died and father had remarried. Soon after the marriage the young girl, named Cinderella for better reason except her parents were cruel and they thought it sounded “romantic”, was left alone in a large house in the suburbs with a stepmother and two twin stepbrothers she had known for all of five minutes. Her father was off on a fishing trip with “the boys”. So Cinderella or Cindy to her friends hid up in her room with her laptop watching Netflix and browsing on tumblr. Soon there was a knock on the door. And by soon I mean four hours later, you know how time flies when you’re watching Netflix.
            “Oh Cindy,” the stepmother called. “Won’t you come out and spend time with your family?”
            “Uh sure,” Cindy replied still annoyed at her stepmother’s new found habit of using the nickname usually reserved for people under the age of eighteen.” I don’t know if you really qualify as family,” she muttered.
            “I heard that!”
            “Whoops.”
            The stepmother stormed through the door barely bothering to open it and snapped the pink laptop from her hands.
            “Hey.”
            “If you’re going to talk to your mother like that then you’re not going have this.” She held up the laptop and stormed out her footsteps booming on the linoleum floors.  
            “So, no more family time?” Cindy called after hers.
            She flopped down on her bed, still covered in the horrible floral pink bedspread chosen by the stepmother when she heard she was getting a “daughter”.

            “And you’re not my mother.” She muttered defiantly as she drifted off to sleep.
Iphigenia:
            Humans seem to think they're indestructible, that they are the only ones. That their solar system is the center of the universe and that if there are other worlds, other “peoples” they are no threat.
            I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. There are others and we are watching. We are learning, quickly. We see how you live and abuse the time and space you have, we’re here to take it back from you.

            Your language is much different from yours. So I’m not sure how my name would translate. You can call me N; it stands for Neptune, the planet from your solar system atomically closest to ours. I am part of one of the first expeditions into your solar system. We came to observe the only other uniforms we have found almost as intelligent as us. I must warn you, our leaders have seen your oceans, beautiful and deep but they also have seen how you abuse them. They will not tolerate much more. We weep for your world and its end is closer than you think. 
Untitled

he’s old and mean and he has no heart
the man down the street
that is
he lives alone
with no company but
his old hollow chest
and when the tweens come rolling by
on skateboards, bikes, and scooters
he retreats inside
and ignores their squeals and screeches               

but the mean old man
he has a story
like  every other neighbor

once upon a time
he was a soldier
with friends
a wife
and kids

then the day came along
when a choice was made
and he lost his love forever

so now he sits
alone
in the dark
abandoned by the world

afraid of loving
of feeling
of knowing
that pain
all over again

and the kids
make fun
on Halloween
of his old “haunted” house

little do they
know
the only thing haunted
is himself

so they giggle and laugh
and dare each other
to go as far as they can
up the drive way
up the steps
ring the doorbell

no one answers

no one answers
the knocks or the rings
or the police
no one answers when they
bust down the door

and they found him there
with a hole in his chest

‘cause after all he had no heart 
3 pm on a Tuesday:
            I looked at my watch. 3 pm. An hour early, of course, I seemed to perpetually early. I sat on the plush grey chair looking at the adults around me. No one else was sitting in the chairs. Awkward.  I checked my backpack for the fifth time: mint blue binder, check, grey polka dot pencil bag with colorful pens, pencils and post-it notes, check, homework planner, check, all five of the books required for the class, check. Dorky blue target backpack, unfortunately check.
            I was sixteen and it was my first day of college. Well, community college. Well, community college through my high school.
            I was sitting in the first college library I’d ever been in wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. I wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t handle actually college classes. I couldn’t even handle advanced chemistry. Holy shit could I still drop out of classes? Take high school instead. That would be easier, boring, but easy. I wasn’t an overachiever. I was a slacker, a procrastinator.
            But that would be so awkward to drop out, return my books, tell people I had chickened out.
            I was stuck.
            3:15 pm. Forty five minutes early.
            I grabbed my iPod and ear buds and planner from my backpack to make it look like I was doing something. Other people were doing things. Did they already have homework on the first day in college? I thought it was always just syllabi and name games.
            Wow they people looked old. Not just eighteen old but like I have two kids and a wife old. Look at that guy he’s got to be sixty. His pants go up to his chest. Why are you here? Retire. I’m going to be the only one under the age of thirty. I can’t relate to these people, I have no life experience; I haven’t even been off the continent. They’re going to think I’m stupid, young, native. Calm down.
            3:25 pm. Only ten minutes? That felt like an hour. Holy shit I’m sweating and its freezing in here.
            I got up, packed up my stuff, mentally said a goodbye to the weird old library people. Maybe all college libraries had old people in them. I don’t know.
            Posters and artwork lined my walkway.  Notes and Messages from the previous year still up reminding me once again how much I did not belong. This wasn’t my world and who was I to try and force myself into it. Just because maybe I didn’t fit in, in high school didn’t mean I should be able to choose my own new world, that’s not how it works. Why did I think it was?
            3:40 pm. Twenty minutes.
            I was not on the third floor searching for classroom 3119. Of course I knew where it was because I had printed out a map weeks ago in preparation. Still the school year snuck up on me and all of a sudden I was in a school again.
            3116, 3117, 3118, 3119.

            3:45 pm. Still early. Perpetually early. 
A poem written during Hamline's Young Writer Workshop with Evan:

The assignment was to use the eight words chosen through free word association in a storyline poem. 

Our words were 
you
jail
evil
leave
theft
hell
manipulation
batman

Our poem:

you extremity of evil
leave gotham alone to die for itself
your manipulation caused the theft and fall of the city
demonic possession is not an excuse for reckless acts
and jail is not good enough for you
go to hell, batman 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

An updated version:


A Week I Didn't Want To Leave
“Well this is shaping up to be a good day,” I mumbled to no one but the sweltering heat that beat down from the cloudless sky. I plopped down on the front steps of the small Episcopal Church we were supposed to be cleaning, pruning and painting. The doors were locked, an obstacle Gretchen, our fearless leader hadn’t considered when setting up the volunteer gig. Ellen plopped down next to me.
            “Oh Yeah, totally glad I came,” she shouted in the direction of the adults, making a rebellious statement of our boredom.
            We talked for a while, about why we came on the mission trip and high school and other small talk. When the heat of the sun got too hot we switched to a small piece of shade provided by a tree in the front lawn. Gretchen paced back and forth talking on the phone, switching from walking to sitting to walking again.
            As I sat in the limited shade provided by the single oak tree decorating the yard, I thought about the night before when the chaperones informed us that we would not be building the house that we had come up north to the White Earth Indian Reservation to build. The very thought of plans changing sent anxiety and adrenaline coarsing through my veins. This trip, for me, was already a giant step out of my comfort zone. The idea of being stuck up north with ten people I didn’t know, no cellphone or computer was a huge trigger for the anxiety problems I had been fighting for the past few years.

Finally a beat up pick-up truck arrived and a middle-aged Native American man stepped out silently unlocking the door to the church and walking back to his truck. Gretchen caught up with him before he drove away, they had words.
We got to work; first, I picked weeds, talking with Ellen, Gretchen and Dennisia about what else but boys. I managed to beat around the bush for the most part excluding names and giving vague details about my last romantic interest.
“So you guys were just friends?”  Asked Dennisia clearly a little confused by the idea.
“Yeah…friends,” I said thinking back once again to the last day of school when I watched Ben walk away from me, down the empty hallway. I shook those thoughts out of my head. “So what about you, any dramatic love stories to tell?”
After the weed picking marathon ended I didn't have much to do which was a relief at first but soon turned into a problem. The painting group didn't need me in the crowded foyer. Daniel and Kayla were weed whacking together and they didn't look like they wanted company. I really didn't trust myself with the power tools; I don't think Chris did either. So I wandered around the church yard sipping water sincerely hoping the rest of the week wouldn't be this boring. For the most part at home I was pretty good at entertaining myself but I didn't have books or TV to distract me up here. I had people. I wasn't good at people.
“You still need something to do?” Asked Gretchen getting off the phone for the first time in an hour.
“Uh, yeah”
“Grab those clippy, sheary things and we’ll work over here on these graves. They need some work.”
I grabbed the “things” and followed Gretchen to the small overgrown graveyard that occupied a corner of the yard.
“So how do you think the trip is going so far?”
I shrugged. The truth was I thought the trip kind of sucked so far but saying so would have been rude and unwarranted.
Gretchen sighed, “I know this isn't what you expected. We didn't expect it either, but we are doing our best to fill our days here and make this trip rewarding for everyone.”
We clipped and cleared the grass covering the grave sites quiet for a few minutes, the silence apparent but not really awkward.
“You know I think you are really the person tying the St. David’s youth together.” Gretchen said out of the blue.
My mouth almost dropped open in surprise. Me? No, surely she had the wrong person. I don’t tie people together; in fact I'm pretty sure I drive people away.
“Thanks,” I mumbled pretty sure that wasn't the appropriate answer.
“No really. I mean next year you’ll be one of the older kids, an upperclassman. You’re brother and all of the other seniors will be gone, and I don’t think any of the older kids your age have the same commitment as you do. People show up because you do.”
“Huh,” I replied once again saying the wrong thing. This was a lot to process. A lot of deep thought for a summer day. My past summers were for the most part filled with mindless TV, sandy beaches and a lot, a lot of books.

Once the hard work was done, lunch was eaten, two bottles of water were drunk each, we all sat sweating in the sun, unmoving after a hard day.
“Alright,” said Mary lifting her head from the place it was laying in the grass, “Two truths and a lie, Colin go!”
“Um…” Colin mumbled caught off guard at the abruptness of the attack.
“Okay, okay I’ll go,” I said sitting up and groaning at my sore muscles, “One: when I was three years old my brother,” I pointed at Daniel for reference, “pushed me into our coffee table on New Year’s Eve and I had stitches up my nose. Two: I fell on a nail when I was seven and have had ten stitches on my knee and three: I have never broken a bone in my body.”
“Two”
“One”
“Three,” said Daniel finally ruining the game because of course he knew the lie.
“Yeah three”
“Of course three”
“Yeah you got me.”
                The game continued and we went around the circle truthing and lying learning more about each other each turn. Afterwards packing up all the tools and backpacks and coolers, we headed out, tired and dirty. After weed picking, lawn mowing, and a lot of painting the entire crew was very tired but we all jumped at the opportunity to go swimming.
            A nice woman who lived in a house owned by the tribe as a whole had graciously allowed us to swim in the lake abutting her backyard. We threw on our swimsuits and jumped in the lake and let the cool water wash away the dirt and soreness of what I’m sure was the hardest day of work any of us suburban teenagers had ever done.
            That night we had our second reflection service. The lights turned off and once again the candle light bounced off of faces making everyone seem older and more somber. That night our service was based on a passage of scripture that spoke about the hungry and cold and lonely. We went around the circle giving our answers to the question, “what does this mean?” something different to all of us. So I sat in that circle with a group of people I had known for the whole of two days, and I told them what I thought it meant. I told them about my own times of metaphorical hunger and actual lonliness, of muffled tears when others slept and a parade of doctor’s offices. I told them about the worst time in my life. How painful and hard and miserable that time was, finally ending with; “but that’s the thing isn’t it we all have our hunger and cold and loneliness real or metaphorical everyone in this circle has something to tell. That’s what makes us human. We all have something that makes us need someone else.” A sentence that I still remember, that my new friends that I made that day still reverberate sometimes when the timing is right.
            After the closing prayer Ellen gave me a surprise hug, a warm start to long friendship. Tears were discreetly wiped away and everyone stumbled out into the cool night. We re-entered the house and played cards until way past lights out.  

Saturday, April 6, 2013


Poem 6:
ENTROPY
today was balanced
symmetric
controlled
yesterday chaos
stress inducing chaos
uncontrollable chaos
terrifying chaos
every day is a new day
different
not sure what will become
chaos or balance
entropy in the mix

Poem 5:
THINGS I HATE
discovering a new allergy
tank-tops in the winter (why?)

the claustrophobia of a crowded table
unexplained anger (from friends)
confusing disappearing dreams

a headache on an already bad day
an unexpected test
or quiz
or anything

forgetting my sunglasses
forgetting anything

social paranoia
social anxiety
being social
the inability to be social

Thursday, April 4, 2013


Poem 4:
SPRING IS HERE?
spring is here
or is it?
weather changes
it seems
just to piss me off
sunny cloudless skies
tomorrow rain
snow next Friday
freezing rain on Saturday
no reason
no rhyme
just a cruel disputation
for my wardrobe
light jacket? heavy jacket?
rain jacket?
what shoes do I wear?
in this bipolar season
the answer is unclear
to both questions
so I ask you instead
is spring really here?

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Poem 3:

A WORLD WITHOUT INTERNET

How would we be entertained?
People would read again
Normal average people devouring books like bookworms
Libraries would fill up
Lines out the doors
Iliteracy no longer a problem

Network TV would be watched-
With comercials
Newspapers would be revived
Magazines our only source of celebrity gossip
Kindles and nooks would die a slow and painful death
Their graveyard a dirty trash dump

What would the insomniacs do at three a.m?
Or the early risers at six?
How would the average research paper change
Without wikipedia.

And how would be connect with our friends across seas?
Or book flights?
Or check our bank accounts?

The world without internet is a scary one
The entire world once again seperated
A gunshot sounds the beginning of a new technological race
Everyone would work and work to bring it back
Our precious internet
This is a short Nonfiction Memoir I had to write for my Creative Writing Class:


A Week I Didn't Want to Leave

 We're leaving!” shouted my mother from the kitchen, we were about to leave for Trinity church in Excelsior, today was the first day of the Trinity mission trip to White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota.
            Two months ago I committed to a week trip up north to build a house on the reservation for a family in need. I had started to regret this decision.
            This morning I was starting to realize that maybe I had made a mistake, I only knew three other people on the trip and we would be gone for a week in a somewhat dangerous neighborhood without my cell phone.
            “Yeah I'm coming,” I was sitting on my bed staring at my suitcase wondering what the hell I was thinking when I agreed to this. I had made the decision in an attempt to “make friends” and “have fun” and “get out of my box”. I knew my brother, who was also coming along, wouldn’t be a constant companion he had a tendency to leave me to myself.
            I dragged my duffle bag down the hallway and into the kitchen, sighed and said, “Alright let’s go.”
            My heartbeat increased as our moving car approached the church. I breathed deeply and tried to calm myself, my anxiety level increasing along with my heartbeat. I put on a brave face so my parents wouldn’t know that I wanted to back out.
            The church service moved slowly and I looked around at the people wondering which ones I would be spending the next week with. My brother and I nudged each other making whispering jokes and calming our individual anxiety. 
            “Bye,” said my mom and she hugged me, “have fun, be careful, make good choices.”
            “Have fun,” my dad said giving a one armed hug as Daniel and I followed the small crowd of young adults to the meeting room.
            “Okay,” said a women I had never met, “we are going to pack up the vans, eat some lunch and hit the road! Oh by the way I’m Gretchen.”
            The next hour was spent packing four vans with suitcases, sleeping bags, food for twenty people for a week, and building supplies and tools.
            “So I heard the house project was stratched,” a girl who looked like she could have been my age or possibly a little younger.
            “Oh really?”
            “Yeah, I’m Christy by the way.”
            “Frances.”
            We shook hands.
            “So what are we going to do up there?” I asked suddenly very concerned about a week up north with complete strangers, my anexity rising up to my throat.
            “I don’t know,”
            She seemed very unconcerned, the exact opposite of how I felt.
            We waited outside on the sidewalk on the hot July day for the departure introducing ourselves to people we didn’t know. For me that was almost everyone.
            The vans were packed up and I ended up with Christy, a girl named Kayla and a parent I whose name I had not learned. We nervously joked for the first hour, listening to music, reading and writing seperating for the remainder of the five hour trip. Interuppted only once by the stop caused by one of the vans being pulled over and given a ticket, which was promptly laughed at, ridiculed, and then forgiven.
            When we finally reached the White Earth Reservation I looked around at the blatant poverty that surrounded me; broken down houses placed way to close to each other for neighborhoods and neighborhoods, overweight adults and children riding around in broken down golf carts and tractors. We had arrived, my anxiety level rose once again.
            Once the suitcases were brought inside and the cots and air mattresses fought over and chosen, the adults sat us down for a talk.
            “Alright guys,” said Gretchen the one who seemed to be in charge, “I know you were looking forward to building a house this week but unfortunately we won’t be, parts of the project have fallen through and the tribe council have decided that project will not be one we will be participating in.”
            “So what are we going to do?” asked a boy whose name I had already forgotten.
            “Don’t worry, we’ll find something.”
            I was worried. For the most part at home I was pretty good at entertaining myself but I didn’t have books or TV to distract me up here. I had people, I wasn't good at people.
            “Let’s get dinner ready!”  Said the adult I had driven up with, I forgot her name too.
            The groups or “teams” were explained to us, as we sat on the floor of the small church’s sanctuary. I was with; Ellen, who seemed nice but probably a person I wouldn’t be friends with in a normal situation, Colin, a sophomore at my high school, Turner, Christy’s twin and Dennisia, Mary’s step or half or something sister and the two adults; Gretchen, our happy-go-lucky leader, and Michael the adult that was pulled over on the drive up. We were not given dinner duty on the first night, but Daniel’s team was.
            The rest of us went outside to the small yard we were confined to for the next week, we were told not to leave for fear of the “bad” neighborhood we were situated it, to “play”. I swung on the unstable swing set that sat in the edge of the property talking to Mary a girl from my grade that I knew but never talked to before. We were quickly joined by many of the other girls including Ellen, Christy and Jillian, Kayla and Rain the ones excluded because they were a part of the group making dinner.
            We talked about menial things for the time it took for dinner to be ready making are way to the kitchen in the basement of the church rejoining the group of boys on the way.
            That first dinner was awkward, bogged down by our own stress and fears and anxiety most of us kept to ourselves. This was sensed by Gretchen who pulled up back into the sanctuary as soon as dinner was ready for our first reflection “service”. The lights were turned off, candle-light bouncing off the faces I had only just learned.
            Gretchen asked us, “What do you fear most about this trip? What do you look forward to? Why did you come?”
            We all took turns speaking as we went around the circle formed by cross-legged teenagers and adults trying to get comfortable. I half paid attention to what my travel mates said and more thought of my own response and how others may respond to it.
            Then it was my turn, “I fear the most about this trip that we won't have enough to keep us occupied, that there will be no reason for us to have come up here, I look forward to getting to know all of you and I can because I thought it would be fun.” My answer only three-fourths true.
            I came because four months ago when my mom asked me if I wanted to go, as my family sat in the sunny porch that had become our meeting room, I wanted to show her that I could get out of my box, that I wasn’t going to waste my summer as I did every year.
            I took a deep breath as the adrenaline that it took to give the answer I had slowly vacated my body.
            That first night was hard, and it took a lot for me to fall asleep. Out of the two rooms set aside for the girls I chose the quiet room along with Ellen, Jillian and Christy, all of us valuing our sleep. Mary, Dennisia, and Kayla chose the other, talking almost every night until the early hours of the morning, sometimes keeping the rest of us awake as well.
             The next morning was a slow start, Gretchen stuck her head down the stairs at seven thirty telling us we had half an hour before breakfast, I slept for another fifteen minutes. Finally dragging myself out of bed with the other girls I put on the first clothes I could find and sluggishly made my way across the yard to the church and silently rejoiced at the sight of coffee.            
            Once sufficient amounts of caffeine were ingested and breakfast was out of the way. The day was laid out to us; we would be going to an Episcopal church on the reservation and cleaning up the grounds and repainting the foyer.
            Once dressed in our work clothes, ripped jeans, t-shirts and old tennis shoes, we were loaded in the vans once again and transported to a church about twenty minutes away.
            There we ran into a problem, the council member who Gretchen had talked to had yet to open the doors to the church, we were stuck with no tools and nothing to do.
            “Well this is shaping up to be a good day,” I mumbled to no one but the sweltering heat that beat down from the cloudless sky. I plopped down on the front steps and Ellen plopped down next to me.
            “Yup, this is totally worth our time.”
            We talked for a while, eventually switching to a small piece of shade provided by a tree in the front lawn. Gretchen paced back and forth talking on the phone, switching from walking to sitting to walking again.
            Finally a beat up pick-up truck arrived and middle-aged Native American man stepped out silently unlocking the door to the church and walking back to his truck, Gretchen caught up with him before he drove away.
            The first day of work was hard especially for a sheltered suburban teenager who had never done an honest day’s work in her life.
            After weed picking, lawn mowing, and a lot of painting the entire crew was very tired but we all jumped at the opportunity to go swimming.
            A nice woman who lived in a house own by the collective tribe had graciously allowed us to swim in the lake abutting her backyard. We threw on our swimsuits and jumped in the lake and let the cool water wash away the dirt.
            After this first day of work we had many days like it, cleaning up graveyards, transporting dirt, painting signs and churches and houses. That second night we had another reflection service this time talking about the crosses we all bear. I learned a lot about my fellow mission-trippers and their hopes and fears and experiences and after that they knew a lot about me as well. After the closing prayer Ellen gave me a hug and we all went back to the house to play card games until lights out.