Endings

I was sitting across the street, eating a bagel, as I watched two men remove the neon sign from the front of the building. I watched as several people approached the restaurant, prepared to enter, but stopped and stared at the sight of workmen removing all the identifying markers from the storefront. The Denny's restaurant on Route 1 in Princeton was closing; I was watching the ending of a small chapter of Princeton history.

It is not that we were particular fans of this restaurant or their food, but it was the one place that was open 24 hours a day, long before coffeehouses and newly renovated campus centers became the norm at colleges. As undergraduates, we looked forward to making a "Denny's run," which involved finding a person who had a car, gathering as many people as could possibly fit into that car, and heading off to eat mozzarella sticks or pancakes at 2am. The engineers among us loved this place for their bottomless cup of coffee which fed caffeine addictions and fueled all-night study habits. Those of us in the humanities just loved to eat and welcomed any excuse to escape from campus. The fluorescent lights, even at 2am, were a welcome beacon to students who were over-achievers by trade, but who were also exhausted by the strain of the high level of performance demanded from us. This restaurant, with its mediocre food, welcomed the teeming masses from campus with its cheap eats, large booths, and hands-off policy.

I had witnessed an ending with the closing of Denny's and it reminded me that I was in the process of witnessing many endings. As a teacher, students that I cared for deeply were leaving my institution and although they often keep in touch, their departures mark the ending of a special student-teacher bond that I cherish. My daughter completed another year of school and although she is still young, I can clearly see the ending of these precious elementary school days. Two young men I knew, a former schoolmate and a former colleague, passed away in the prime of their lives...endings for which I had not been prepared. In my own life, doors were closing, bringing endings to some long-standing dreams and hopes.

But endings often bring beginnings, new and wonderful beginnings. The ending of chemotherapy for one of my dearest friends marks her emergence into a new type of physical and psychological strength. The ending of the old school year marks the beginning of a new group of arriving students and new opportunities for me to mentor and dish up my brand of radical pedagogy. The endings of jobs or school or relationships can mark the very moment in which one closes the door to the past and leaps, blindly, into the unknown future. It is scary and exhilarating and crazy. But this is life: a cycle that comes to an end, but allows us to begin anew and fresh. Even those endings in which we have to say good-bye permanently, or those endings in which we must leave little pieces of ourselves behind, still pave the way to new beginnings.

Route 1 in Princeton, New Jersey will never be the same for me. Thinking about those late night food runs are some of my most cherished college memories. But I'm waiting to see what they build in that space and hoping that this ending will open the door for me to create some new memories. As T.S. Eliot so eloquently states: "In my end is my beginning."

Anger

I've been struggling to write about anger, afraid that an admission of this strong emotion brands me as an "angry" person. I am a "glass is half full" optimist, someone who regularly doodles rainbows and happy faces in the margins of my journal. I know all the words to "Favorite Things" and I regularly dance around the house a la Julie Andrews. My life is full of "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes" and "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes."

But for the past few weeks, a small undercurrent of anger has been brewing and simmering inside of me. What began as a small flame has been fueled by incidents large and small. I am angry at the lack of common human decency shown to others; witnessing an irate driver barely miss hitting an elderly woman who was slowly crossing the street nearly brought me to tears. When I am at work, I am angry at the racism and sexism that festers in the academy. When I am at my house of worship, I am angry at the indifference to suffering and blatant homophobia that festers in the church. And when I am in the privacy of my home, I am angry that other people are not angry enough.

Yes, I want this anger to fuel my passion to love others more, to more fervently work towards justice. The anger that Christ expressed led not to sin, but to healing and mercy. But first, I am working on accepting my anger as a legitimate and necessary feeling. In working so hard, personally and professionally, to refute the stereotype of the "angry Black woman," I left myself no place to experience the rawness of this emotion. And so now, in written words and in spiritual language, I am working with my anger and working through my anger. I know, without a doubt, that a place of healing and mercy is at the end of this process. But for right now, I am allowing myself to feel what I feel.