The Maverick Tribe

Today I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.  One of my goals for the month of August was to do some volunteer work, and building a house seemed more rewarding than spooning out beef stew to the homeless.  Early this morning, I dragged myself out of bed and with apprehension made my way over to the constuction site, not knowing exactly what to expect.  (I have about as much experience with carpentry as Charles Bukowski had with sobriety.)

The site was in one of the many drab, foggy neighborhoods in San Francisco that most people never visit or even hear about.  Prosaic, square housing units crowd up against winding streets.  (These are, apparently, the scrappy and proud anti-Victorians.)  The occasional resident, usually Asian, ambles down the sidewalk.  Everywhere one looks, grey is the dominant color.

The houses already built by Habitat are, by contrast, cheerfully painted and architectually creative, if not particularly ornate.  They neither patronize nor condescend to the surrounding neighborhood.

The house we were working on was little more than a foundation.  The site was being supervised by a friendly lesbian named Erin (or Aaryn?  I don't know how lesbians spell it).  She looked tan and healthy, and born to wear a toolbelt.  The day pretty much went like this:

Erin/Aaryn:  Here's a shovel.  Dig this ditch.

Me:  Ok.

Erin/Aaryn:  Here's an industrial-size power drill.  Drill seventy holes in these 4-by-12's.

Me:  Ok.

Erin/Aaryn:  Here are some bags of cement mix.  Mix up some cement and pour it.

Me:  Ok.

And so on.  And I don't know what else I can say about this day except that I loved it.  It was the perfect antidote to sitting in cubicle, sifting through emails, worrying about PowerPoint decks.  Digging and moving dirt around was good exercise and meditative to boot.  Drilling all those holes nurtured my perfectist urges, as with each one I strived to manuever the drill such that the hole was exactly straight and precisely centered in the right place.

At the end of the day, my hands were sore, but in a satisfying way, not in that pinched, tense way one's hand and wrist get sore by operating a mouse.  As I thanked Erin/Aaryn and walked back to my car, I absently passed my hand over the burn in the back of my neck which was bright red.  And I recognized a strange, parental attachment to the house.  I wanted to see how it was going to grow, and have my hand in its development.  And most of all, I didn't want any of those hack volunteers of tomorrow to mess it up.