I carried a brown paper bag lunch to school every day from fifth grade to the middle of tenth grade, when I relieved my mother of the duty by choosing what I would and wouldn’t eat for lunch. Until then, it was a smooshed up tuna sandwich and some celery sticks or perhaps bologna and cheese. The most special days are when Mom had baked goodies for one of my older brothers to take back to college in a care package and I would get a cookie or a brownie surprise amidst the peanut butter and jelly or ham sandwich.
My Emma, however, has never been much of a sandwich fan and I have never been one to force her.
Hot lunches at high school are a difficult maneuver since Emma eats with friends in the choir room, last week I decided I needed to start treating her lunch differently, since she simply refused to eat what she didn’t want no matter how carefully I selected items for her lunch.
Now, she gets pasta or pizza along with fruit and perhaps a sweet on the side.
This morning I cooked pasta with pesto and boxed it up for her.
Not even leftover pasta this time but pasta made especially for her lunch. I can almost hear old school parents, “Just give her what you had. She gets hungry enough, she’ll eat whatever you pack. She clearly isn’t starving to death.”
Right now it feels appropriate to go this extra mile, even when I find smashed grapes and uneaten cheese-crackers in her backpack at the end of the day. She knows I went out of my way to put together a lunch I thought she would enjoy and packed it with a ton of Mommy love.
She is in high school. She needs this as much as a tiny-child needs it.
I think I will include a note in tomorrow’s lunch goodies.
A Mommy-Daughter love note sounds like the perfect mid-school day treat, along with some cold cheese pizza, perhaps.
Yes, this sounds exactly right.
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
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