The incessant buzz of Portland International Airport assaults my ears as I step off the 747. The loudspeaker crackles to life. “Flight 1911 from New Orleans. If this is your final destination, baggage claim is straight ahead.” The strap on my duffel bag digs into the sunburn on my shoulder as I follow the elderly man in front of me. He is bent double, shuffling across the carpet. He trips, dropping his suitcase. I reach down and place the handle back in his hand. “Thanks son,” he says. I look into his eyes, and they pull me into a memory.

The intense New Orleans sun beats down on my head as the cherry-red pickup truck pulls into the driveway, rocking over the cracks in the pavement. A bead of sweat forms on my brow and slowly wanders its way down my nose. I make no move to wipe it away as the elderly black man takes a tentative step out of his truck. He looks to be in his 70’s—wrinkles roll down his face, and the veins in his hands pop as they grip the seat-back. The man laboriously strains to open the door, letting out small grunts of exertion when it resists his efforts. Reluctantly, the door opens. His feet search for the ground, and my breath catches in my chest when he stumbles, barely recovering his balance on the open car door. The man pauses to take in the cracked sidewalk and the heap of leftover sheet-rock and broken plywood that lies like a pile of discarded bones bleaching in the sun. He takes faltering steps toward the circle of students sitting on the coarse crabgrass in front of his house; his gait is painfully slow.

I glance around the circle at the faces I have lived and worked with for the past week–twenty of us crammed into a five-room, one-story house. I remember complaining with the best of them, grumbling about three minute showers, eating the same food every day, no TV, no computer, ten square-feet of personal space. And the grueling work. Up fourteen feet in the air on ladders laying sheet-rock on the vaulted ceilings. Hours spent in the pocket of heat at the apex of the house, breathing the stale air trapped at the top, where the hundred degree weather cooks the air until it’s a hundred and forty. And all for what? This is it, I think to myself. This is the reason I’m here. This is the man I just went through hell for.