Building

Trips to ikea and home depot are becoming more frequent. Building a life takes time, it takes work, it takes strength--I never saw that before. I never understood that staying put takes as much courage, if not more, than going. I had a friend once. We met volunteering in Eastern Kentucky. I only served for a week during spring break, he dedicated 2 years to building homes for the poor. Back then 2 years, to be in one place, sounded like an eternity.

We sat on the makeshift wooden stairs he'd built leading up to his trailer's front door. Flaking white paint covered the entirety of the trailer, worn by the sun and the humid summer days that bear down on Kentucky's lush mountain communities.

He flexed his big jaw and spoke, "You know what Sergio, no one here is going to remember us. I leave next year, and if I come back in 2 years, a few people will remember me. If I come back in 5, maybe a couple. In 10 years, not a soul will know who I am, and I'll walk into the local drug store or market, they'll wish me a good day, and that'll be that." His brow furrowed as he spit his tobacco out onto the white gravel path in front of us, leading to the retreat center. His eyes stayed fixed. I felt a bug on my knee so I slapped it as hard as I could, but it was just the grass blowing in the breeze.

I looked at him, then I looked at the gravel and asked him, "so then, what's the point? Or better yet, what's the answer?"

He spit again. "You know who they're gonna remember Sergio? They're gonna remember Dotty, they're gonna remember Father Beiting [people that have spent their lives working in rural Kentucky]. Those are the people that make the difference. Those are the people that change lives and communities. We'll do our part, but it's so small. The answer? Stay."

I slapped my knee again as the grass brushed against it.

Stay. Home. Build. Love. Family. Community. Build. Build. Build.

Today at Ikea, I bought a cutting board, a salad bowl, a picture frame (a triple), a shelf, and a cheap full length mirror. I didn't pull my car up, and since I was alone, I had to do my best to carry it all in one trip. I made it to my car, but when I got to my house, the mirror slipped and shattered into a hundred pieces at my feet. I looked down at myself reflected in all these little shards of glass, stolen sand grains from some desert or some beach, a million miles away. Disjointed and fragmented, scattered on my pavement.

I went inside my house and set everything else down carefully, then went back outside, swept up the glass and put it into the recycling bin. I'm doing a lot of breaking and sweeping these days, but so it goes when you're building. Things break. Tomorrow I'll buy a new mirror and I'll hang it up in my room. And on Wednesday, I'll be building a desk for myself. There will undoubtedly be quite a bit of sweeping with that endeavor, but so it is. I'm staying.

[you hear me love? I'm staying and we're building.]