lunch
I’ve never been a fan of lunch. I think about what I am going to make for dinner all day. And I love making a hot breakfast, even on a school day. But lunch, no. When I was younger, I skipped it entirely or observed the social rituals by settling in for a cappuccino or an apple so I could visit will everyone else ate. Now I eat lunch, but for purely utilitarian purposes. By about four p.m., my brain cells start to devour each other, and—all thing being equal—I would like to avoid being irrational and snappish with my colleagues and my family. On weekends, I have to remind myself to stop whatever it is we’re doing to feed people before somebody has a meltdown.
One of my favorite things about my girls’ elementary school was the scratch kitchen. It was one-of-a-kind in our district, and our cook—who held rock-star status amongst the kids—prepared healthy, locally sourced, and delicious lunches every day. I felt it was my moral duty to support the scratch kitchen by buying hot lunch for the girls, so I avoided adding lunch-making to our already adrenaline-fueled mornings.
Not so in middle school. It was a rude awakening when Ruby first entered the world of long lines for heat-and-serve pizza and lukewarm turkey dogs. And so, at an advanced age, I entered the ranks of the lunch-makers. I resisted everything about it. You have to plan ahead or the girls will end up eating leftover brown rice and last year’s Easter candy. You have to add an additional 20 minutes to the last-minute rush of forgotten math homework and overdue permission slips. You have to think about lunch.
Violet followed suit, and I found myself rushing to make lunches for both girls. It was a slapped together affair of turkey sandwiches and sliced apples with some little treat tossed in as an after-thought. I wrote their names—circled with a heart—on each side of the sack, and sighed with relief that another day of making lunch was over.
But a couple of months ago, something started to change. Suddenly my girls seem so big, and their minds seem so independent and rangy. They talked about things I didn’t even know they knew (if you know what I mean). Ruby, chatting about the quadratic equation with the check-out lady at New Seasons. Violet, introducing us to What Does the Fox Say? weeks before it became the thing. Several times a week, I think: Where did she learn that word? (And not just the four-letter kind.) It dawned on me—a little late perhaps—that their daytime lives are full and rich and independent from me.
Suddenly lunch took on a little different meaning. I realized that lunch is my one foray into the mysteries of the middle school. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t start actually doing anything differently. I still run to the supermarket at 10 o’clock to buy cheese, and I still push apples past their peak crispiness. I settle for store-bought cookies and graham crackers. But, I think about lunch differently. All of sudden, I don’t dread it.
Even though everyone is still moving at warp speed and my central position still stands (Lunch. What’s the point?), I feel differently as I wrap waxed paper around the same-old turkey sandwiches. I feel—in my body—that the turkey sandwiches are numbered. I know there will be many more lunch hours in their lives, and they won’t involve me. They will be nursing a cappuccino or eating a slice of chocolate cake, and I will have nothing to do with it. Their lunches will be their lunches, and they won’t come in a brown paper sack decorated with their names encircled with a slap-dash heart. Suddenly, I really know that my lunch-making days are numbered. And knowing that changes everything.