School Lunches

I bought a Valentine’s Day card for my mom last week. On the front, there’s a picture of Cupid in his little diaper, bow and quiver of arrows in hand standing on a cloud with his mom who is saying, “Here’s an extra-small sweatshirt if you get cold. Remember always point that arrow away from you. And I packed you a nice, heart-shaped baloney sandwich for lunch.”

The reason I bought this specific card is that Mom Z. actually used cookie cutters on my sandwiches when she packed my lunch. Pumpkins, Easter eggs, smiley faces, hearts, you name it. Why? Because it made eating a regular ol’ baloney sandwich more FUN.

My mom is the single greatest lunch maker on the planet.

When I think back to school lunches, I fondly remember the following:

• Napkins with stickers on them for every holiday. She’d go one step further and have word bubbles coming out from the stickers saying stuff like, “Have a great day!” “Good luck on your test!” “Tell your friends I said hi! (and then she’d list all the people at my lunch table)” Her napkins would be artwork, hand-drawn characters peeking through a window she’d cut into the two-ply paper. On rare occasions, she’d tape quarters to the napkin so I could enjoy a special treat of an ice cream sandwich (or in high school, a Chipwich).
• PB&J, Fluffernutter sandwiches, baloney sandwiches, liverwurst sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, peanut butter and cracker sandwiches. Every morning as I ate my breakfast, she’d say, “What do you want in your lunch? I have…..” and then she’d list my options and I’d get to choose what kind of sandwich I wanted that day, down to the type of peanut butter (always creamy for me) and type of jelly (always grape, although now I love strawberry). 
• Oranges and apples. I hated the pith on the orange, so my mom found a way around that and would send me with oranges cut in circle slices so I could peel them apart into little triangles of fruit juice. The apples also got special treatment. She’d cut them into chunks, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, dump them into a baggie and twist tie a toothpick onto the bag so my fingers wouldn’t get all gooey. Growing up, I thought she was being extra nice, but found out recently she put cinnamon on them so I couldn’t see what degree of brown the apple would get as the day went on.
• Dessert. Compliments and criticism here. First, my mom packed my lunch with a sandwich, drink (chocolate milk or apple juice), something healthy, and a dessert. That dessert would be anything from pink coconut snowballs, Ring Dings, Ho Hos, Twinkies, leftover Halloween/Easter candy to homemade cookies. And it was AWESOME. As an adult, I find that when I eat lunch, I often crave a little something sweet. Why is that? Maybe 13 years of conditioning???
• Healthy stuff. My mom also tried to sneak in some healthy stuff once in a while. Raw carrots. Raw broccoli and cauliflower. Cucumbers. (maybe this is why I prefer my veggies uncooked?) Celery with peanut butter. One day while we were in our local grocery store (Laneco), Aaron F’s mom came up to my mom and asked where she bought her orange french fries. My mom stood puzzled. Upon further explanation, my mom realized she was referring to her homemade crinkle-cut CARROTS. Carrots + pastry blade = orange crinkle cut fry lookalike.

Indirectly proportionate to my A+, 4-star lunches were Harve’s lunches, which paled in comparison to mine. I’d show up with my Popples (you remember them) lunchbox and matching thermos and Harve would show up with…..a full-size paper Laneco bag. In my lunchbox I’d have separate baggies for each item, my personalized napkin, and of course, my dessert.

Harve would dump her paper bag on the lunch table to find…a sandwich made of 2 heels of extra wheat bread, 2 slices of cheese (which is the ONLY item Harve doesn’t eat, literally any other food she’ll eat) and lettuce wrapped in a…..deli meat baggie. So essentially a lettuce sandwich, once the cheese was tossed.

To add insult to injury, at the bottom of the paper bag were 3 prunes.

Some days, she’d excitedly talk about leftovers that would be waiting for her in her locker: egg rolls, steak sandwiches, chili dogs. All at whatever balmy room temperature her locker was.

A bottomless pit while we were growing up, she was always hungry, so needless to say a lettuce sandwich and 3 prunes weren’t really going to cut it. Thankfully/Not thankfully, my mom packed me with more food than I should have eaten (and yet did, most of the time).

On days when Harve brought her lunch, I’d offer up 1 of my Ring Dings or my apples and cinnamon, or some of my peanut butter crackers because I knew she was still hungry. On days when Harve BOUGHT her lunch from the lunch ladies, she was happy as a clam. Stuff that most kids wouldn’t touch—roast beef or meatloaf, mashed potatoes with gravy that had a hint of green to it, green beans, corn—she ate it all and loved it. To this day, when she works as a teacher, she still buys the school lunch and STILL enjoys it.

But for me, nothing quite takes the cake like my mom’s lunches. Even lunches at home were fun because she’d make us “Happy Face Plates.” A paper plate with a face drawn on it, covered up with lunch to make another face. Pickles would get sliced in half and be used as lips, lettuce would be used as hair, radishes would be used as red cheeks, etc.

In recognition, I’d like to give the gold medal of lunchmaking to Mom Z. for her 20+ years of school lunch service. [sidenote: she STILL packs my dad’s lunch, so when he officially retires she should get a bronzed lunchbox or something]