At my workplace, there is a little cafe in the office complex. In it work Serena and Sammy, the owners, and whomever they can keep as the scrambled egg and sandwich maker, who stands behind the counter and takes orders. Serena and Sammy are South Korean, and most of the women they hire for the deli job are, as well. When I first started working at the office complex, a woman named Sun worked there.

Each morning, I walked down to the cafe for a cup of hot water for my tea, and almost every day – unless she was very busy – Sun would greet me, saying: “Towles! You are so beautiful! You must make husband very happy.” I would laugh at this, thank her, and order my tea. Sun was desperate to perfect her English, and she loved to chat, so in time, I began to learn a little more about her:

She drove an hour and a half to work each day, arriving around 6:00 am for her all-day shift. Once, when I mentioned I was headed to China, she drew an imaginary map in the air for me, to show just how far South Korea was from the NRC, and where her relatives lived. She showed me photographs of her family – a husband, a son and a daughter, tightly posed and smiling brightly in front of a gray, air-brushed canvas.

When Serena and Sammy weren’t looking, Sun would, with a furtive glance, pass me a fresh biscuit, a cookie or a luscious cube of cantaloupe, shushing me when I tried to thank her. Sun worked hard at scrambled eggs, but she would sometimes confide in me how bored she was with her job, how she longed to spend the day with her music, teaching American students how to play the violin. She invited me to her children’s orchestra recitals, gave me her business card and urged me to pick up a stringed instrument.

One morning, when I went to the cafe for my daily cup of tea, Sun seemed brighter than usual. She announced that she would be leaving the deli. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “This is America. I must pursue my dream.” Before I left the deli that day, Sun gave me a little gift bag. I tried to open it there, but she stopped me. I thought that her reluctance to have me open the gift in her presence might signal some kind of cultural difference, and I was keen to respect my new friend’s native customs.

Back in my office, I considered the bag: It was small and silver, embossed with snowflakes despite the spring-like weather. The tissue paper Sun had used to conceal the gift was white and gauzy, and inside was a slip of paper on which she had written a note, thanking me for helping her practice her English and for being so nice to her. The gift she gave me is still such a puzzle – when I opened the bag, I found two delicate, lacy brassieres – one pink, one white – too small for me, but lovely. I giggled – and blushed. I imagined Sun worrying over her choice, the packaging, how to pass the bag over the sneeze guard without anyone taking notice. When I walked down to thank her later, she was gone.

Among all the gifts Sun gave me while she worked at the deli – the conversation, the stolen goodies – this last, dear, strange, funny one taught me the most. There are all kinds of people in the world like this, people who want someone to talk to, people who are full of surprises.

Andrew, the guy who used to work the cash register at our dry cleaners, was, in a former life, in his former country, a classical pianist. I loved to see him drum out tunes on the countertop in time to the music from his headphones. I sat beside a guy named Don once at a Tennessee football game whose memories of Vietnam made me shrink from my own selfishness and indulgence. At my first-ever job out of college, a woman named Nancy owned the convenience store in the building. After I’d gotten to know her, she set me up on a blind date with a guy from the 12th floor (he was British – and another stranger! – but it didn’t work out).

So, over time, I have become slightly obsessed with talking to strangers. I am a little shy, but these people fascinate me – and they are everywhere: on every city corner, in every car on the highway, in fields and big office buildings and in taxi cabs. All of them, filled with life, potential, stories and surprises.

So, I’ve never taken endings very well. Endings to books; endings to relationships; endings to eras – they’re all the same: a mixture of relief and grief tied up in one tidy little moment of closure.

Graduations, in particular, have always brought out the worst of this inherent reluctance. The fierceness with which I cling to my chosen educational institutions and/or professors might, in some circles, be considered gauche, embarrassing, over-the-top.

This week marks the official end of my graduate school studies. And, as excited as I am to shed the day job and get on with a new chapter in my life, there is something deeply bittersweet about the finality of this venture. I wonder if I’ll ever have the luxury of enjoying such a focused education again, or if the idea-sphere is something that can only be cultivated in a classroom. It’s not that I prefer to live life in theory, but that life sometimes seems so much more interesting, and certainly less intimidating, that way.

I am one of the only people I know who could go to school, full-time, for decades and be completely happy. My reluctance to finish things off is, of course, a fear that once I’ve got the diploma in-hand, I’ll slump down into a life in which I forget how to lean in to challenge, or how to celebrate the power of ideas.

Nevertheless, I”m going to try to celebrate this week. Finishing my M.F.A. is a milestone, whether or not I want it to be over. It is a gift with debt (both literal and metaphorical) attached, but a gift all the same. Now I’ve just got to figure out how to go out and use it.

**I apologize in advance to the vegetarians who may read this. I love animals (and veggies), too. Also, I’ll be more consistent with my posts now. I’ve been out of town a good bit.**

When I found out my father had died, I was standing in my kitchen. We were having friends over for dinner that evening – two girls and a guy who have kept Ivy for us so often that she knows their names, and starts jumping for joy when we say them.

I was cooking pork tenderloin. The kitchen was hot; the oven on, at 500 degrees.

The last conversation I ever had with my dad was actually about how to cook the meat – more specifically, how long to cook it, and what color it should be when it was done. It was a quick conversation, memorable now only because of its finality, and because of the odd presence of pork tenderloin at both occasions … as though the pig somehow marked the beginning and the end of a small, curious circle.

My dad was a meat man. In fact, he loved all sorts of food. But, as a farmer, he prided himself on knowing all animal parts and their corresponding names – that a “pork butt,” for example, is actually a part of the pig’s shoulder – and knowing how to cook them.

When Andrew and I got married, my parents gave me the Joy of Cooking. I can remember my dad turning with interest to the pages diagramming cow and pig parts. He was almost gleeful – surprising in someone as stoic as my dad – and then serious, admonishing me to study the diagrams, to know not just what to do with my meat, but to know its origins, too. He would have liked Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, had he the chance to read it.

I thought of this memory today because we’re having friends to dinner tomorrow night, and, as usual, I’m thinking of fixing pork tenderloin.

Despite the shock and sadness I associate with that day in May, the heat in the kitchen, the steamy scent of crispy marinated pork coming out of the oven, I still gravitate towards entertaining with tenderloin. Now, I grill rather than roast it. The meat does better that way, and it saves me the trouble of remembering too much, or of willing some other disaster by way of taking the same steps as before.

But, I continue to cook pork tenderloin. I use the same marinade; consider Daddy’s advice each time I check to see if the meat is done. I do this partly for renewed connection with my dad, but mostly because he would have hated to stand between anyone and a slab of good meat.