Multi-tasking

I am attempting to multi-task at the Boys and Girls Club. Access to posting my blogs has become a premium since my laptop no longer will connect to our neighbor’s wireless Internet (don’t worry – they knew we used it).

There was a surprise waiting for me at the Boys and Girls Club today – our Start SMART class has been canceled and Caleb, the usual computer room monitored, couldn’t come in to work today. So here I am, monitoring the computer room with no book to read. I figure this is a good time to catch up on the reflection I never wrote for this past weekend.

At this point, I can now officially say I have less than a week in Booneville in the capacity of a GreaterWorks intern. And I can genuinely say I am sad about having to leave. I realize this might sound funny since I’m coming back, but I’m sad that after this week there will probably be a decent number of kids from the club that I’ll never see again. And I’m sad that I won’t be here to help make check-in smoother and Power Hour more manageable. I wish I could be here to finish SMART Kids with my class.

Even though I know by this time next week I will be well on my way to Minneapolis, Minnesota, I can never quite wrap my mind around change until it has already happened. Maybe this is a way to keep myself from being too saddened by the reality of leaving. I’m not sure.

It is hard for me to think about leaving the kids that I have really connected with and gotten to know over the past months. There is a part of me worried that they will miss me too much, but another part of me that wonders if they will miss me at all or just forget about me after a week or two – like I was never here to begin with. I can’t decide which would be worse … I guess the latter would be better for the kids.

Seasons

Last night our team had our final book discussion. We were finishing Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. In his final chapter, he uses a metaphor of the seasons to make his point.

In essence, as interns we are in the autumn of this experience. Palmer explains that autumn is a time of paradox. Everywhere we look, we see life dying off, but hidden beneath the death are actually the seeds of new life.

And I can see that. I see the ways we as a team are saying our goodbyes … through the flood of dinners we’ve been meaning to schedule but never set a date for, in passing off our responsibilities or looking for replacements, in answering the question of “how much longer do we have you for?” with “two weeks.”

But I can also see the tiny glint of seeds of new life. I see it in the way that we, as a team, can genuinely sit and have a fun conversation without the awkward silences. And in a way it makes me sad that it took this long for us to be able to appreciate each other.

But I suppose that is the way these things work. My mentor was celebrating her birthday last week when she picked me up from the airport and let me in on her newly found insight that the further she progresses in life, the more she feels like she understands it and gets it right. She was also slightly frustrated that she couldn’t have figured it out earlier.

That in mind, I guess the best thing to do is just appreciate the company of my team and the progress we’ve made over the last seven months for these next few weeks and hope that this year leads to continued friendships with them as we each move our separate ways and move yet again into the metaphorical springs and summers and embark on new experiences.

The airplane blog

As I fly somewhere over the distance between Ohio and Texas, learning that not all American Eagle tray-tables were created equal (I must hold my laptop on my lap … my plane home had superior laptop-supporting tray-tables), I know that it is official: I only have three weeks left in Booneville… sort of.

Unlike my teammates, who are working on saying goodbye, I am saying, “see you soon.” In some ways I think this task is deceptively harder than the former. For Rachel, Katie and Kyle, all loose ends must be tied by the end of April for better or for worse. Their goodbyes are fairly final. In my case, it is easy for me (and perhaps equally easy for those in the community) to think of May as a small hiatus where if my loose ends remain loose, they can be tied upon my return.

Of course this is not the case. What I must continue to remind myself (somewhat of a procrastinator by nature) is that my return in May will bring a new and different set of responsibilities. My involvement in the community will, without doubt, look different than is has for the past seven months.

My newfound enjoyment of church on Wednesday evenings might continue, but not at my small Catholic church. Rather than consistent Monday through Thursday afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club, I anticipate shorter, drop-in visits. Of course, I do hope to continue weekly line-dancing lessons at the senior center throughout the summer.

I can’t say I’m concerned about the transition for myself; I think I adapt well to change (perhaps adaptability is my no. 6 strength?). However, I have heard transitions can be hard on Booneville. For this reason I am striving to do the best job I can at preparing the community, especially those less familiar with YouthWorks, for the changes in my involvement.

And while I am a little bit saddened to see my involvement with GreaterWorks coming to a close, I am very excited to introduce YouthWorks to new corners of Booneville and touch more lives as a result of the work I have been doing since September.