Friday.
We are here.
Wow.
What a week it has been. Our day at Earthworks started with harvesting lettuce and kale in the hoop house across the street. Some people took a shift serving food in the soup kitchen at 11 while the rest of us rinsed the freshly picked food and began planting two other rows of kale. Tyler, our riddling master, dropped by briefly before class and we said our good-byes. Of course, we couldn't leave without honoring our new friendship with a gift--an exclusive MAB " A lil MO in Motown " Tee. Over the past week, he had become a part of our family. Now, even after we've left, he will know a little piece of Missouri will be thinking about him.
When we finished planting the soil blocks of kale in their rows, we headed over to the kitchen to take the next serving shift. Clothed in gloves and aprons, we were ready to serve today's warm lunch of potatoes, squash, fish patties, salad, cookies, and spring rolls. The visitors of the kitchen wished us well through exchanges of "God Bless" and "Have a great day." Having worked in the greenhouses and fields all week, it was a refreshing change to see how the labor outside manifested itself in gathering over warm meals and conversation inside.
As we finished our shift, we loaded up on leftovers to feed ourselves and sat down for one last meal at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen. Rewdjety taught us to play "This is a this" and we challenged ourselves to round the circle as many times as possible. With the exception of watering the planted plots from this morning, we had finished our work for the day. The rain pitter-pattering on the windows was fitting for the sadness we all felt to be leaving so soon. We said our good-byes. To Roxanne, to Patrick, to Shane. The students in the EAT program weren't there, as their training runs Monday to Thursday, so we had a smaller crowd to wish well as we left this afternoon. We presented Shane with a t-shirt to match Tyler's, but not before he solved the riddle "what do you wear that starts and ends with T?"(we're working on it, okay?). As we walked to the cars in the lot, it started to hit us that today was it. We had reached the end. There was more in store for the afternoon, though...
Because it was Claire's birthday, and we all wanted it to be as special as ever, we let her choose what our afternoon would look like. With some help from her mom, we did exactly that.
We went home briefly to change and then started our journey driving to a 4:15 showing of the movie Get Out. We showed up later than planned and no one would sell us tickets, so we quickly rerouted and found a second theater showing it at 5:10. We booked it from the first fancy theater (fully equipped with bowling alley and futuristic soda machine) to the second and made it just in time.
We left the movie shook (go see it if you haven't or hit us up if you have) and talked about it our whole drive to dinner at Shake Shack in downtown Detroit. We managed to snag two booths for our group and shared laughs and convos over heavenly burgers and--for some--stuffed mushroom patties.
You might be thinking "wow, what a day they must be exhausted that's a lot and happy birthday" and you would be correct. So, as any sane group of ten tired students would be thinking, we decided to also hit up the famous DIA before its closing at 10. The DIA is the Detroit Institute of Arts--a museum with a collection that ranks in the top six in the entire nation. WHAT. so cool.
We had about 40 minutes to explore before they closed, but the consensus even in that time seemed to be that the place was massive and "unpeckable." 10/10 would recommend.
We drove home to debrief with our housing coordinator and then with one another. It was a late night, but worthwhile. After all, it was the last.
Some tears were shed and then we went to bed, only to get up within hours of falling asleep to get on the road for our journey home. We left, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 6am, and left the city we'd come to love.
In the spirit of trying not to be cliche, I won't say that this week was one for the books. But, in the spirit of being real, this week was ABSOLUTELY one for the books. At our dinner last Sunday, Troy (Hope House staff) had shared with us the four stages of group development: Forming, storming, norming, and performing. Since then, we have seen the ebb and flow of these stages within our own MAB family in ways we never would have expected or could have planned we would.
Though A "lil MO" is no longer in Motown, Motown remains within us. Thanks to those who stayed tuned for our journey and to those who contributed to making this trip a reality. Some of us have had our lives changed, some our eyes opened, some our walls broken. It has been rewarding, thought-provoking, and, of course, fun. We have 9 new peers, and countless others, to call family and the world has shown us just how small it really is. Another thank you to life and new experiences for being our finest teachers.
To all, it has been real.
Cheers to the love and the laughter,
Detroit 1
No comments:
Post a Comment