SOLD

This time last year, we were still in a barn, painting and scheming and trying to square up an exhibit that seemed to refuse to be square.

Now, we have a trailer and an experience that has made it to California and back with another California trip on the way. We've had three showings in town and two within a few hours drive. Hundreds and hundreds of people have gone through and come out the other side without anything falling on their heads.

It still seems to be standing up, and, about the time that we thought that we were going to be through with it, it still seems to be picking up steam, gaining a life of its own despite our lack of any grand canvasing efforts.

Being the type that is prone to "believing six impossible things before breakfast," it all seems very simple in my head. We set out to build an exhibit, so, of course the end result was an exhibit.

What doesn't tend to stay so well is the reality of the sheer number of hours that have been poured into this exhibit. As if too many growing up years of Shoeboxes and Nutcracker have normalized the pouring of every waking moment into a project in brief spurts of intensity, this too seems like just another thing to do.

Of course, it isn't.

Not all families sit around the dinner table and discuss procurement, budgeting, and scheduling for a traveling anti-trafficking experience. Not all trips to the store include cap guns to make South Sudan smell like gunpowder or apple spray for Washington.

Not all families build their schedules around set-up and tear-down dates. But, in this part of the desert, at least four families do.

We pass things back and forth between showings as if we were passing off a baby. "Make sure you..." "Don't forget to..." "Be careful about..."

Because, there are quirks, little things that each person knows, about the way that the trailer hauls, or the walls go up, or the curtains drape, and we all fight the feeling that no one else will do it quite right - even if we aren't sure what "right" is ourselves.

But, it always comes out right in the end.

Even when soap is late or the router doesn't work or the eighty-eight year old woman can't figure out where her audio is coming from. Even when we don't think that we have the volunteers that we need or  the trailer gets scratched or stacks of lumber slip sideways. Eventually, things come together.

Just like we have audio now, even though it seemed, a year ago, like it would never be finished. Just like the walls were eventually painted and we finally figured out how to make the scents strong enough to mask the smell of gym. Just like the t-shirts did come and the website does have everything that we need.

If we'd gotten it all right the first time, there would have been no adventure.