The first hundred days and other endings
When FuseBox announced that it was closing, I immediately booked a reservation at the Korean restaurant located in an industrial stretch of West Oakland. As a parent, I’d long admired how the owners, Ellen Sebastian Chang and Sunhui Chang, sometimes shut to attend their daughter’s soccer games.
On Sunday, I received a text from the restaurant about the final meal it would serve: “We hope all conversations tonight will be public and spontaneous rising in song or words or shouts. We are tasting this food in this place for the very last time. Come to the table in the spirit of this, in the metaphor of this, in the welcoming of this. This moment is for all of us.”
With the end of the restaurant’s five-year lease, the high cost of living and the cost of running a business in the Bay Area, they decided to close. Sebastian Chang, an artist and community organizer, greeted the early evening crowd gathered in the courtyard. “Endings are all around us.” A reminder, she said, not to make us sad, but to make us present in the moment. She encouraged those of us with children at the dinner to discuss endings, and her words have stayed with me all week.
Endings are an occasion to take a look back. Saturday, April 29, is President Trump’s 100th day of office. It’s a period when influence and public approval are typically at their highest, enabling a president to enact his agenda. But this president and his administration are far from typical. He failed to pass reforms of the Affordable Care Act, his proposed immigration ban ended up in the courts, and an FBI investigation and congressional probes are examining his campaign’s ties to Russia.
A White House press release touted his achievements while bashing “historic Democrat obstructionism.” The president has struggled, even though Congress is under Republican control.
The end of this month also marks another grim occasion. Arkansas scheduled a spate of executions because its supply of a drug used in the lethal injection procedure is set to expire and the state can’t get more; pharmaceutical companies do not want their products used in capital punishment.
Earlier this week, Arkansas executed two men back-to-back. It’s outrageous that something as arbitrary as an expiration date could hasten the end of someone’s life. The state shouldn’t treat prisoners on Death Row like cartons of spoiled milk.
Yet endings are also an opportunity for thinking about the future and about how we might build a different world.
“I give Donald credit for one major achievement,” actor and activist George Takei wrote on Twitter. “He has mobilized an unprecedented number of Americans to #resist and run for office in 2018.”
At FuseBox, my husband and I talked to the twins about the end of the school year. Their teacher said she has been reassuring students that they can come back for a visit and will help them prepare for what comes next by touring a first-grade classroom.
“I’m sad that kindergarten is ending. And that Chinese class is ending,” Didi said.
“Things have to end for something else to begin,” I explained.
“The fifth-graders are leaving,” he said solemnly.
“Are you friends with them?” I asked. From the playground or aftercare?
No, he said, but I understood his melancholy and trepidation. He and his brother are developing a much stronger grasp of change, of endings and beginnings.
The weekend had been busy with activities, and dining at FuseBox gave our family the opportunity to sit back and savor, to consider each bite of the kimchi prepared by the couple’s daughter, SunIm.
We feasted on bacon-wrapped mochi, roast octopus, crispy popcorn chicken, fiery wings, unctuous pork belly skewers, meatballs, duck prosciutto and grilled okra. We shared the family-style meal with another couple, who told us about their travels and their favorite dishes at FuseBox. “There’s nothing else like it,” they sighed.
Sebastian Chang stopped by every table to chat with patrons. She’ll continue with her art — she co-directs the performance series House/Full of Black Women — and her husband has been working with the Undocumented Legal Services Center at UC Davis.
Dessert arrived, coconut citrus bars with undertones of caramel, the perfect ending to a meal made all the more delicious and poignant in its finality. The twins yawned in their seats, ready for bed.
Come fall, they’ll be in separate classes for the first time, ending their constant proximity. Although the unknown is exciting and a bit scary, their devotion to each other remains steadfast.
“My brother looks out for me, so I won’t get lost,” Gege said. “And I look out for my brother.”