The Other Side to the Bird by Bird School Lunch Exercise
If you've read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, then you'll be familiar with her recommendation on describing school lunches as a writing exercise. The idea is that school lunches are more than just about food but are intuitively viewed by children as expressions of motherly love and "cool factor."
I could completely relate with that--my school lunches were never prepared by my mother but by my grandmother or a maid. My grandmother might direct that leftover lasagna be packed in my lunch, which was all right though I didn't usually finish it as I didn't like it cold. A maid left to her own devices would give me an instant meal in a pouch that had been purchased by my mother. In my early grades when we had packed snacks rather than a full lunch, I'd have a small box of raisins or once, memorably, a mayonnaise sandwich. Nothing but bread and mayonnaise. I opened it to check and my seatmate and I wondered if maybe the filling had fallen out. But it was never there. Or rather, it was just mayonnaise, plain white mayonnaise.
For many years, I did not like mayonnaise except in potato salad. Or tartar sauce.
So once I started fixing school lunches, I made sure to do it well. I don't "career" it like some moms on Pinterest, making fancy bento box meals. I don't even push myself to make everything fresh and natural, just spent an hour in the middle of the night googling for school lunch packing tips so I could work out how to pack food that would taste good and not spoil. Some of my best successes are herbed rice (oregano helps prevent bacterial growth) and marble potatoes with barbecue powder (my husband's brilliant idea). Sodium and nitrates are hard to avoid, because preservatives help keep a lunch from spoiling after six hours in an insulated bag. But I figure one meal in a day of ham, bacon, fried salted fish, corned beef, or canned chili isn't going to harm my child. It's better than her not having any food at all. Ordering cafeteria lunches is uneconomical given my daughter's poor eating habits.
Right, I know that my daughter is not that interested in eating. A friend once told me I shouldn't worry about making my kids eat because no child had ever starved herself. Well, she had never tried to feed my daughter, who would rather talk, read, or daydream than eat. Who is so focused on these activities that it would never even occur to her that she could eat while doing them.
A typical conversation with her after school would have me asking if she had eaten her food. Usual answer: I had maybe two bites (or pieces, if I gave her cookies or marble potatoes). On better days, she might say she ate half. Or that she ate the ham but not the bread of her sandwich because the bread was soggy.
Still, I've been soldiering on. And when my water broke Tuesday night, I was patting myself on the back for already having her lunch ready: Half a burger (from Tropical Hut) to which I'd added ketchup, cheese and lettuce. For her snack, she had a container of chocolate pudding. I made sure my husband brought the lunchbox to my mother's where the kids were to stay.
The baby arrived the next day after she was fetched from school. So we had the usual conversation. Report on the chocolate pudding: Maybe half. The burger? "I didn't have time to eat it."
It was almost enough to send me into post-partum depression (which I have never ever had). Thankfully I had not made the effort to cook a lunch for her specially that night as I sometimes do, or I think I really would have flipped upon knowing she didn't eat it--on the one day that she had only six lines of homework to copy, and therefore couldn't use the excuse she was too busy writing her homework down to have time to eat.
So maybe some children don't intuitively view packed meals as an expression of maternal love and thoughtfulness. But I know adults view a successful packed lunch as a sign of domestic competence, and adding insult to injury, my mother expressed consternation when my daughter also didn't touch the lunches she'd provided my daughter during my two days of confinement. And her teacher purchased packed lunch for her on her first day of school after the birth even though I'd packed the usual amount. This isn't the first time a teacher has tried to feed up my underweight child--a teaching aide used to give her chocolate cereal in kindergarten. I don't think I'm being oversensitive in feeling that these well-meaning people think it's my fault for not packing food that she likes, when no other kinds of food are on my menu!
One of my favorite movies is Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. But now I question the romance between the chef and the single mom whose daughter he secretly makes school lunches for. Now I wonder if it's plausible she would be charmed by his gesture once she found out. Because I now realize that I in her place would be greatly insulted, even I was not a good cook and knew it. The fact that she prepared fresh meals for her daughter, instead of relying on instant stuff like my own working mom, shows that she made a real personal effort. She should have been insulted, even if he'd been straightforward and offered directly to take over the job of cooking for her daughter. Or at least dissolved in tears knowing her cooking would never be good enough for her daughter.
Because whatever the child might think of the lunch, the fact that it is there and in a sufficient amount and reasonably well-balanced is already a sign of maternal affection and concern. Cool factor be damned. I can acknowledge there are some mothers who are clueless about their child's likes and dislikes (though I can't be one, given how vocal my daughter is about her feelings). A school lunch could show a lack of connection with the child or the minds of other children, but never a lack of caring, so long that it does exist and is prepared without fail. If only children would realize this. I think I really would be depressed over this if my son were not the opposite, so excited over the food I pack for him, often the same as his sister's, that he asks to eat some of it on the way to school.
Everyone who tries the Anne Lamott exercise ought to also do the converse, considering the mother's point of view when she prepares the lunch. If you are a mother who packs lunch for her children, though, I guess you won't have to do it.
I could completely relate with that--my school lunches were never prepared by my mother but by my grandmother or a maid. My grandmother might direct that leftover lasagna be packed in my lunch, which was all right though I didn't usually finish it as I didn't like it cold. A maid left to her own devices would give me an instant meal in a pouch that had been purchased by my mother. In my early grades when we had packed snacks rather than a full lunch, I'd have a small box of raisins or once, memorably, a mayonnaise sandwich. Nothing but bread and mayonnaise. I opened it to check and my seatmate and I wondered if maybe the filling had fallen out. But it was never there. Or rather, it was just mayonnaise, plain white mayonnaise.
For many years, I did not like mayonnaise except in potato salad. Or tartar sauce.
So once I started fixing school lunches, I made sure to do it well. I don't "career" it like some moms on Pinterest, making fancy bento box meals. I don't even push myself to make everything fresh and natural, just spent an hour in the middle of the night googling for school lunch packing tips so I could work out how to pack food that would taste good and not spoil. Some of my best successes are herbed rice (oregano helps prevent bacterial growth) and marble potatoes with barbecue powder (my husband's brilliant idea). Sodium and nitrates are hard to avoid, because preservatives help keep a lunch from spoiling after six hours in an insulated bag. But I figure one meal in a day of ham, bacon, fried salted fish, corned beef, or canned chili isn't going to harm my child. It's better than her not having any food at all. Ordering cafeteria lunches is uneconomical given my daughter's poor eating habits.
Right, I know that my daughter is not that interested in eating. A friend once told me I shouldn't worry about making my kids eat because no child had ever starved herself. Well, she had never tried to feed my daughter, who would rather talk, read, or daydream than eat. Who is so focused on these activities that it would never even occur to her that she could eat while doing them.
A typical conversation with her after school would have me asking if she had eaten her food. Usual answer: I had maybe two bites (or pieces, if I gave her cookies or marble potatoes). On better days, she might say she ate half. Or that she ate the ham but not the bread of her sandwich because the bread was soggy.
Still, I've been soldiering on. And when my water broke Tuesday night, I was patting myself on the back for already having her lunch ready: Half a burger (from Tropical Hut) to which I'd added ketchup, cheese and lettuce. For her snack, she had a container of chocolate pudding. I made sure my husband brought the lunchbox to my mother's where the kids were to stay.
The baby arrived the next day after she was fetched from school. So we had the usual conversation. Report on the chocolate pudding: Maybe half. The burger? "I didn't have time to eat it."
It was almost enough to send me into post-partum depression (which I have never ever had). Thankfully I had not made the effort to cook a lunch for her specially that night as I sometimes do, or I think I really would have flipped upon knowing she didn't eat it--on the one day that she had only six lines of homework to copy, and therefore couldn't use the excuse she was too busy writing her homework down to have time to eat.
So maybe some children don't intuitively view packed meals as an expression of maternal love and thoughtfulness. But I know adults view a successful packed lunch as a sign of domestic competence, and adding insult to injury, my mother expressed consternation when my daughter also didn't touch the lunches she'd provided my daughter during my two days of confinement. And her teacher purchased packed lunch for her on her first day of school after the birth even though I'd packed the usual amount. This isn't the first time a teacher has tried to feed up my underweight child--a teaching aide used to give her chocolate cereal in kindergarten. I don't think I'm being oversensitive in feeling that these well-meaning people think it's my fault for not packing food that she likes, when no other kinds of food are on my menu!
One of my favorite movies is Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. But now I question the romance between the chef and the single mom whose daughter he secretly makes school lunches for. Now I wonder if it's plausible she would be charmed by his gesture once she found out. Because I now realize that I in her place would be greatly insulted, even I was not a good cook and knew it. The fact that she prepared fresh meals for her daughter, instead of relying on instant stuff like my own working mom, shows that she made a real personal effort. She should have been insulted, even if he'd been straightforward and offered directly to take over the job of cooking for her daughter. Or at least dissolved in tears knowing her cooking would never be good enough for her daughter.
Because whatever the child might think of the lunch, the fact that it is there and in a sufficient amount and reasonably well-balanced is already a sign of maternal affection and concern. Cool factor be damned. I can acknowledge there are some mothers who are clueless about their child's likes and dislikes (though I can't be one, given how vocal my daughter is about her feelings). A school lunch could show a lack of connection with the child or the minds of other children, but never a lack of caring, so long that it does exist and is prepared without fail. If only children would realize this. I think I really would be depressed over this if my son were not the opposite, so excited over the food I pack for him, often the same as his sister's, that he asks to eat some of it on the way to school.
Everyone who tries the Anne Lamott exercise ought to also do the converse, considering the mother's point of view when she prepares the lunch. If you are a mother who packs lunch for her children, though, I guess you won't have to do it.
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