Valentine's Day Alone

So…I don’t have a date this Valentine’s Day (or anything resembling a date). I know surprising (not really). So being alone on Valentine’s Day means one of two things: I can mope around, watch romantic comedies, drink alone, feel sorry about myself, and eat an entire pan of brownies or I can make this day about what it is supposed to be: love. Just because I don’t have someone special in my life doesn’t mean that I don’t have things or people that I love. I love writing and reading and drinking tea. I love finding and trying new and healthy recipes. I love my old friends who tried their best to hold on to a person that had changed and didn’t quite fit anymore and love my new friends who took me in even though I was obviously broken. I love my parents who have spent their money and their lives trying to make my life as perfect as possible. I love my brother who I don’t always get along with but always had my best interests at heart. I love the person I am becoming, someone kind and smart and beautiful. I love the beauty of calculus and physics and all the science of everyday things.  I love life at this time more than I have ever loved it before and I think that’s the key to loving someone else. 

The thing about life is sometimes it’s impossible to find the good in it. A day of awkward encounters, mean words, and stressful work and other times perfection in the smallest meaningless things; standing in an empty parking lot as the snow falls softly from the sky, beautiful, inhuman, without expectations, for itself or me. A moment that although already ending feels like it will go on forever. Or this moment writing in a hallway busy with life, drinking a hot cup of tea, a pink pen. Moments I wish I could enjoy in the moment. The thing about life is it is made up of moments. And maybe in this moment my pants are too tight and there is a hole in my left sock, and I need to wash my hair. But this moment is also a moment where I watch two people across the hallway connect. A moment where I overhear a conversation between two loved ones. A moment where I see a tired woman sit down with relief. It is a moment of life and that is the very most I can ask of it. 

I don’t want to be a main character. Let me explain. I read a lot, watch a lot of TV, and movies and I write, or at least I try to. I know a lot about protagonists, antagonists and main characters in general. They are fully rounded people with strengths and weakness. There are also subsequent characters, which are often flat, showing only one emotion, or defining characteristic. They serve their purpose and then they are gone from the story. Readers or watchers often only remember them for one particular reason, whether it be their excitement or information or something else more interesting and prevalent to the story. Sometimes when I watch TV or read a book, I identify with one of the main characters but I want to identify with a flat character. I want to disappear into a crowd. Be a character in a story that a reader forgets before they forget the part they played in the story. I don’t want to be a round character with a full range of emotions; it’s hard to have a full range of emotion. I always feel like I stand out, awkward and extremely aware of who I am and what I am doing. I want to forget. I want to be remembered for my excitement, my information and then forgotten. 

No one appreciates a day of doing nothing. I don’t mean likes sleeping, doing nothing. I mean reading a book, watching a chick-flick, drinking a cup of tea, doing nothing kind of day. I like going out, having fun with friends but more than anything I like doing nothing. 

Sleepovers

The thing about sleepovers is they stop being about sleeping after a certain age. They start being about drinking or boys or drinking with boys. When we were little the idea of staying up late at a different person’s house terrified us. When we got older the idea of boys and alcohol scared us. But we faced our fears with pillows and sleeping bags and later with spin the bottle and cheap vodka. This didn’t come without its embarrassing moments. Unfortunately for me it involved a lot of puking. First at my friend’s house in the first grade and a bad cause of the stomach flu and later on the white carpet of my best friend’s house with the help of wine coolers and vodka. We used these moments and the friends we trusted to face our greatest fears: the dark, being away from home, using the substances we were always told we shouldn’t, kissing boys we were told to stay away from, sneaking out of houses we were supposed to be in. They were a part of growing up and although some of us skipped a few steps we all have our good memories (and our bad) from our sleepovers. 

I want to do everything,  I want to be happy.

I go to a very good high school, and I am grateful for my education. When you enter high school, suddenly you are bombarded with questions about what you want to do for the rest of your life. And when you enter a very good high school the only expectable answer is college, a major in something practical, and a stable, long lasting career. On New Year’s Eve I reconnected with a guy I used to know.  I found out that in the year we had not spoken he had moved to New Zealand and was doing amazing, inspiring things. I started thinking about what I had done in that same year and realized I was in almost the same place I started the year in, which was not to say a good place. And you see this friend he didn’t go to Minnetonka High school, he went to a public school in Minneapolis. His life after high school was not mapped out by generations of family members and expectations from parents. He got to choose his future. There is a theory in sociology that human beings are born with many talents and societies and cultures such as those in America force human beings into a single talent. Most people are unhappy in this aspect because it means that they are not living up to their full potential.  I like physics, and writing, and genetics and cooking. I don’t want to choose. I think college is the right choice for me, and maybe that is because I was raised with that belief that college was important, and it is. And to do any of the things I want to do I need an education but I don’t want to be unhappy doing only one thing. I want to do everything. 

I am a bit of a hypochondriac. Now hear me out; I do have a lot of ailments for a seventeen year old. I have terrible allergies, asthma, my digestive system doesn’t really digest very well, and I get horrible migraines. But I have this ability to go from headache to brain tumor before you can say neurologist. I worry and not to brag but I'm really good at it. I worry constantly about my health, my family, my friends, people I don't know, clothes, homework, college. Do you like my new hair color, do I like my new hair color, I don't know but I'm worried about it. Literally anything you can think of. And I think it’s kinda ruining my life. I have so much going on in my head it’s really hard to live in the real world. I think the key is to want to, and I'm working on that. 

2014 is going to be good. I will be good. No more lying. Less tears. More exercise. Less candy. Less cheese, more vegetables. More love. More making out. More fun. More books, less TV. More vodka, less tequila. The same amount of shoes. More art, more music, more writing. Way more writing. More sleep. More coffee. More tea. No depression. More learning. More enjoying. Less bullies. Less mean people. More beautiful people. More money to good causes. Less money on ultimately worthless things. Less waste. Less fat. Less worry. Less anxiety. More pictures. More videos. More documentation. More hats. Hopefully more hair, maybe less. More money? Less worrying about money. More memories. More papers I enjoy writing. Less boredom. Less things. Less pills, less doctors appointments. More friends, better friends. More experiences. More terrible puns. More blog posts. Less celebrity trash. More tears of joy. More fairy lights. More warm sweaters. More beaches. More bikinis. More self-confidence. Less self-hate. No self-hate. More nerdiness. More Doctor Who.  More superheroes. Less panic. Less paranoia. More love. More family. More hugs. Less existential crisis. Less selfishness. Less swallowness. More travel. More me. More me in the world. 2014 will be more than good, 2014 will be AMAZING. And I will make it that way!

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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 

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.  

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