Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Shaping of Ourselves Via The Lunch Box



Every morning, I pack my three children lunches that are full of the kinds of things I dreamed of finding in my lunch when I was a kid.

What kind of lunches did I wish for when I was a little kid in school? Oh, nothing special. Just the usual non-traumatic kind that wouldn't cost me thousands of dollars in therapy as an adult.

I'll bet that for most of you out there, when I mention "school lunch" you cock your head to the side and smile a wistful memory smile. Say "school lunch" to me and I head for the bed, piling up the blankets--only my nose peeking out so I can breathe. I'll also bet that other kids wanted to trade lunches with you, right?

You  probably remember yourself, back in second grade, sitting at the long lunchroom table across from  friends (have to interrupt here--what was that like?) chattering away while pulling out the contents of what your very American parent had packed for you. Such a sweet, happy memory; reminiscing about swapping lunches makes you smile and doesn’t conjure up a knot in your stomach, does it?

What you had in your school day lunch is a piece to the puzzle that we grow up to be. My lunches, my first-generation American lunches, can only be described with the word “PANIC.”  I’d watch American children around me reach into their bags and pull out amazing items like I had seen on TV. Angels would sing as they'd fish out Little Debbie snack cakes, shiny bags of potato chips, factory pressed fruit pies.

My South American lunches were from another planet, in sight and smell. The grip of anxiety that came when I'd open my thermos and release the kraken of my lentil and rice soup with garlic and cumin. "Yo, anyone wanna trade with me?" I don't think so. The School Lunch Trade–when the contents of my lunch shouted out who, and what and where I came from. Oh, to be part of the consumer crowd, the land of processed cheese food and deli meats, the gooey blob of Hostess Snowballs, the Sunny-D with 10 percent juice.

Hey! Who wants to trade me their bologna and mayo on Wonder white bread for a big fat slice of musky goat cheese and guava jelly! Look! My Abuela threw in a chunk of mango on top  for extra Latino measure.

You could hear the squeals of non-delight that came from the American children as they watched me carefully stack a cube of white cheese on top of a cube of guava on top of a cube of mango … mmm mmm, that’s good eatin’, right there.

What are you eating?? Eww …

Mmm … mmm ... mmm ... mmm and mmm. This? This is a delicious guava jelly and goat cheese breadless sandwich. Yum Yum. I’d trade with you but I just want it all for myself.

And so I’d rehearse my script, thinking I could fool the kids into thinking I was glad that they never asked me to trade with them. At noon every day, I’d mentally practice my words. Yup, I would convince them that the lunch I had was just too good to give up to anybody. I knew the lunches my Colombian Abuela would have packed for me would be red hot up on that ethnicity scale. The possibilities of what I'd find inside my lunch box made my scalp prickle: would she have thrown in a peeled, diced platano? Chopped avocados? Maybe a papaya?  Could I be lucky enough for a thermos full of the Colombian signature dish, Calentado?

I would almost faint from the combination of late morning hunger and forgetting to breathe as my heart pounded over what was in my clearance-shelf padded white Monkees lunchbox. The minutes ticked closer and closer to the big reveal. My lunch time plan was always the same: Sit down, lay out a spot, and present the contents as a thing of beauty. Everyone at the table would know that their palettes weren’t sophisticated enough to trade their lunch for mine.

The fantasy of this scenario played out daily.

I wanted to be part of the fun, to be in on the food trading, to hear other children go oooh and lick their lips when they'd see what I was packin'. But this was the late 1960′s, and cultural diversity was just not part of the landscape. Especially not in a parochial school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This memory is from so long ago, but still feels like the day before yesterday. When I pack my children’s lunches today, I tell them of my Abuela’s slices of white goat cheese with a generous slab of guava jelly atop, garnished with tropical fruit, then sprinkled with pomegranate.

They ask me if that’s why I’m so weird.

It might be.

Can’t be 100 percent positive, but probably.

That which doesn’t kill us, makes us funnier, I tell them. Which means I should be getting my own special on Comedy Central any day now.

***

31 comments:

  1. I had peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread and orange slices in every lunch that my mother ever packed for me (unless it was a field trip day - then I got something Hostess).
    I thought it was so boring then. Now, I wouldn't care what it was as long as someone else was making lunch for me!

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  2. Because my mom is French she REFUSED to give us sweets. So it was always a sandwich with an apple and a box of raisins. And I threw away the apple every single time. I recently told her that and she was shocked. When she asked me why I did that I replied "because you never gave me hostess cupcakes (which I BEGGED FOR TO FIT IN WITH ALL THE OTHER KIDS.)

    If I'd had kids they would've gotten some kick ass lunches from me!

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    Replies
    1. You would be SUCH a good, wonderful, understanding, relatable mom, Suzy.

      Delete
  3. haha there was plenty of days i would have traded the sandwich for a bit of flavor of the world....we would def trade at the lunch table to mix it up a bit...but i seldom got sweets...

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  4. You sweet thing. I would have sat with you, but you would never have traded with me. had a family of doctors and nurses, all hippies. And we were several income brackets below the rest of the school. So I was mocked for my tofu sandwiches and my lentil soup in a thermos. But I got no credit for ethnicity. I was the lame little white girl who was just...so...lame.

    They asked me if that was why I was weird, too.

    When does my funny start growing? If I got a humor training bra, would it help?

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  5. My son is a "weird" child as well, Alex. I was sure his requests for things like "bocconcini and tomatoes marinated in garlic oil," "tuna with salt and olive oil," and "a thermos full of olive oil" would end by grade three. Well, there is no end in sight, and try as I may to make him eat a freakin' butter and jam sandwich, this little Italian boy won't hear of it.

    So you're no wierdo, CAPICHE? ;)

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  6. I love you. And goat cheese. I grew-up on the school free-lunch program so had to take hot lunch everyday even if it was the stew. So most days I just sat and ate nothing. Well mainly I just sat and ate nothing because I did not want to show my free lunch card.

    I remember one fine day in third grade as I was sitting there with my hot lunch tray in front of me while the other kids ate their sandwiches and chips...the mean girl in the next class came up and took my bowl of potato soup and dumped it upside down on my head and left the bowl on my head like a hat.

    I'm not sure if that was the most embarrassing part of the day or afterwards when my mom wasn't able to leave work to come get me so I had to spend the the rest of the day with wet hair from the nurse trying to get out all of the potatoes, and wearing a boys shirt and pants as that is all we could find in the lost in found.

    Anyway, yeah, I kind of hate school lunch. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hear you.

      Had we a free lunch, we would have qualified.

      And I think I would have felt odd about that, too.

      No pleasing the young, who just want to be like everyone else.

      Delete
    2. Also: I'd love a post on this, b/c you would do it justice.

      The cruelty of children, and how to do our best to prevent that and can we???

      I'm so sorry this happened to you.

      Delete
  7. I was the strange kid who didn't like sandwiches, mayonnaise, or any kind of fruit/vegetable. Thus, I'd eat all the dessert and chips out of my lunch and make requests for salami and crackers. A thermos full of soup was ecstasy for me.
    To this day I still don't like sandwiches.

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  8. my mom made me buy lunch every day. i always wanted a bag lunch, but that smart woman didn't want to open the door to that possibility. I still really like canned green beans and creamsicle iced cream. now my kids' school has NO CAFETERIA so we pack every day. i do not enjoy it all all, but i'm hoping i'm not inflicting trauma on margaret.

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    Replies
    1. I don't particularly remember what lunches my mom packed for me early on (most likely the standard PB&J, and no fancy sweets like Hostess), but after a stint on school lunches I started packing my own. Often leftovers. I didn't care what people thought about it. With my own kids, since we don't eat meat, they asked me to pack them lunches and they liked taking interesting things like pomegrante seeds. I still do for the son who is in high school and it is almost always the same - tuna on whole wheat, an apple, grapes or some cut-up fruit, a granola bar, a baggie of nuts, a mini candy bar, and a thermos of water. He eats it all.

      Delete
    2. He likes his lunches!!

      I LOVE when I empty out the lunch boxes at the end of the day, and the thermos is wiped out empty.

      LOVE THAT.

      Delete
  9. Truer words were never spoken "That which doesn’t kill us, makes us funnier".
    My mom baked most of our cookies and for that reason I was asked to trade. While I coveted Oreos and Chips Ahoy the other kids wanted homemade. Go figure. So, I happily traded my cookies for 'cookies'. Of course now I get what a good thing my mom did for me and how her cookies were/are far superior to the other stuff.
    This brought me back. Great post, you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I absolutely believe you that you wanted the store bought.

      The store bought, our idea of what is the best out there.

      We don't know, as children.

      Delete
  10. I always secretly longed for the lunch that was packed each morning by mom, with love. Instead, my Mom worked and I bought my lunch.

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  11. Actually, your lunches sound really delicious. But I totally get the whole thing about just wanting a plain PB&J b/c that's what the "normal" kids had. Can you believe I'm already dreading packing D's school lunches? I am. *Sigh*

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    Replies
    1. What stabs me in the heart is how my kids think that they're not different.

      Oh, if they only knew ...

      Delete
  12. One of the best writing prompts EVER comes from Anne Lamott, who says "write about school lunch." Everyone, EVERYONE has a story (or a hundred) about that Darwinian space known as the school cafeteria. Your "ethnic lunch," my "weirdo" lunchbox (my mom refused lunch boxes with TV tie-ins, which, duh, were all the rage), my own version of weirdo lunches (peanut butter & mayonnaise, anyone? particularly delicious after sitting in an unrefrigerated locker for five hours)...Sitting alone b/c no one would talk to me...etc etc etc. The stuff of nightmares and, yes, therapy. Not at all funny. And yet...funny.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not at all funny, and yet so funny. All these memories, I'm so happy to share them, and my boys are thrilled to no longer by my sole audience.

      Miss you, Deborah.

      Delete
  13. As a first generation American I love reading tales of others, no matter where they’re from. I remember thinking to myself that one day when I was all grown up I would buy peanut butter and Miracle Whip. Two things my father found the mere thought of repulsive and would not allow us to buy. He was right about the Miracle Whip. LOL!

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  14. What does it mean if I say that I want your school lunches, now?

    I never had lunch envy - but I also never traded lunches. I did have chips, but seldom had snack cakes. I was used to a sandwich (usually peanut butter, but sometimes ham & swiss), two pieces of fruit, and a bag of chips. To this day, I still don't feel "right" if I eat a lunch without some measure of fruit.

    I also never had to worry about getting picked on (considering my size, I'm sure you understand why).

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  15. My girls ask for a homemade lunch, then bring half of it back. "Oh, I didn't have time to finish that orange; it was time for recess." "What smell? No, there's nothing in my bag. No, there's nothing in my -- oh, wait, here. Avocado. From last Friday."

    As a child I loved having a homemade lunch. Usually a tuna sandwich or some deli meat. None of my kids are particularly into sandwiches (weirdoes). They seem satisfied with school lunch but we do tend to pack them snacks for later in the day. I've always wanted to trade too but no one ever offered.

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  16. I took peanut butter and jelly to school pretty much for six years straight. That's because the only other thing I ate as a kid was spaghetti with american cheese melted on it. I was weird. And I wonder why I have a son that eats NOTHING? I send him some pretty good stuff, and I'm lucky if 10% of it is consumed! Madness! Nowadays I would die if I didn't have lunch.

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  17. I bought school lunch most of the time and hated it. I went through most of my childhood not really eating anything at school because it was too disgusting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We had no hot food at the cafeteria, but I think/I KNOW/I would have loved it.
      We just want to fit in.

      xo

      Delete
  18. Oh, I laughed out loud. And smiled in total, total recognition. Alexandra, we would have been lunch table buddies for sure, and I bet we would have traded lunches. My brother actually has a happy story, which is that his "American-American" friend once traded his PJB for my brother's zhong (sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves).

    As you know, our little guy spent the first half of his life in Japan, and I had lunch with his class once during kindergarten when he brought in seaweed and little fish with the eyes still on them. While all the little kids cried EWWW in chorus, my son just chomped the fish down with pride and a huge smile on his face, laughing along with everyone. What a sign of the times, I thought to myself. But anyway, that was kindergarten. I will need to see how things are now in grade 3.

    My mouth watered reading your post too!!

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  19. You should definitely be getting your own special, I would watch! My lunches were similar to yours, except Eastern European and always filled with a note from my mom. Which was cute, until it was embarrassing. I now pack my son the most American lunches I possibly can, but I'm starting to wonder maybe he's missing out.

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  20. There are many reasons you should have your own show! I don't remember ever having anything good to trade...too boring, but I do remember begging Eileen, who sat next to me, for a piece of the pepperoni off her sandwich. I drew the line at requesting any of the parsley her mother packed her though...still not sure if it was garnish or breath freshener, but makes me laugh either way!

    My step-father has told me of the tunafish sandwiches his Jewish mother packed...no mayo...just the tuna. He was not impressed, nor were his classmates!

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  21. I had a squished peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I might have been allowed to buy milk for 6 cents (chocolate was 7).

    My kids are not allowed to bring their own lunch. They have to eat what the cantine serves up, which is fortunately way better than a pbj.

    ReplyDelete

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