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.