The morning’s local newspaper as I pen these words announces the governor’s decision to close all schools in the state for the rest of the year. This makes me remember the café closing, as I am imagining one day a month ago that the children carried their backpacks off to the bus stops after their breakfasts, never knowing it would be the last day they would perform that whole routine in the 2019-2020 year.

In 2007 I went to work as usual at the seminary café I’d been managing since after my husband died in 1999. I was prepping for the lunch crowd while listening to the radio when suddenly two men came through the door and said I had to leave—right away. The 1898 former gatehouse, former classroom building, former study lounge was not strong enough to support the weight of the bookstore above the kitchen, said the urgent building inspectors. So my meats and cheeses sliced, and my chili and kielbasa underway, I was unceremoniously out on the curb.

I never returned.

The morning’s local newspaper as I pen these words announces the governor’s decision to close all schools in the state for the rest of the year. This makes me remember the café closing, as I am imagining one day a month ago that the children carried their backpacks off to the bus stops after their breakfasts, never knowing it would be the last day they would perform that whole routine in the 2019-2020 year.

Back in 1969 our high-school yearbook had a photo of the spring school dance with the following lachrymose text: “This is the way the ball will end, not with a bang but a whimper,” derived (with liberties taken) from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men,” which closes: “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

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