Lunches during the summer were VERY laid-back – peanut butter sandwiches, soup from a CAN, leftovers from supper the night before (which led to The Girl wailing “If I had liked supper, I’d have eaten it LAST NIGHT!”), and probably some other foods that were so exciting that I HAVE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THEM. And yet the quickly approaching school year – they go back on Wednesday – has me planning elaborate school lunches again: homemade soups packed in thermoses, empanadas, heart-shaped gingerbread cookies, homemade granola bars and other overreaching, unnecessarily fussy plans. They’d be just as happy, you see, with store-bought granola bars and a package of crackers and cheese, which makes me suspect that these fancy lunches aren’t all that much about them, perhaps.
Their teachers will see their lunches, you see – or at least the rotating lunch monitors, since it’s obvious that The Boy, especially, has no need for an adult presence while he eats – and so their lunches become one of my only ways for my constant Parenting as Public Performance Art act (well, beyond my kids being bright and nicely dressed and clean and well-behaved. Beyond THAT.), since I can’t hang around in their classes all day. (Well, I could. Some mothers at the school volunteer all day, every day. Really. But the school frowns upon me bringing my disruptive toddler to the kids’ classes and since it’s apparently ILLEGAL to leave her alone at home by herself, we don’t spend that much time at school.) So the teachers and/or lunchtime monitors need tangible proof – for some reason – that I work very hard at my children’s lunches.
It’s also about them, my growing-so-big kids. During the summer, we were together all day, and so they had me all day as a constant presence. They didn’t NEED a thermos of homemade chicken soup as proof that they were loved, because I was following them around listlessly, breaking up fights and reading Five Little Peppers and and taking them out for ice cream AGAIN. The proof of love was there clearly enough and so lunches became just a brief meal that interrupted their constant snacking. But now they’re going to spend the majority of their days away from me, and so I feel this need suddenly to make them homemade gingerbread cookies – full of iron, which they need, and heart-shaped for my heart, my very love, for my still-small children to carry out into this big scary world away from me.
First--the link in your Frog and Toad post is broken (you managed to get today stuck in the tag at the very end which is not an actual page to be linked to--surprisingly enough. :)
Second, with both of us working from home and homeschooling I find that the whole homemade bread and cookies, sitting down with everyone to eat a meal thing is generally a special occasion since we are all together all the time anyway. So yes, I am in total agreement, because if my kids did go to public school (or even Sunday school or other away from mom activities)they would be gettting extra specil "I still love you" meals.
I totally get this. I've seen glimpses of this myself, in the preschool set. It's field trip day, they need a sack lunch, so I make sure that it's a perfect sack lunch. Yes, I get it.
Parenting as Public Performance Art. Ha!
oh beck--this is so me. i have wonderful plans to make flutter's angel bites as happy light sweet snacks, i bought a million little finger veggies for my girl's lunch, and was thinking how calzones would be fun in her lunchbox.
i like packing lunch. now if she would only EAT it!
Beautiful post. Love it.
Parenting as Public Performance Art is brilliant. It goes hand in hand with my "Make Me Look Good in Public" lecture I give before we go to the library.
Is The Boy at school all day? Or just half day? You know it would be nice if Canada had a uniform system of schooling instead of this province by province variation and contradiction.
(PS - I followed your FATASF link with no problems.)
He's at school all day, every day now. Last year, when he was in JK, he was in school all day, every OTHER day. It's too long for the little ones!
Well, I'm glad I;m not to that point. I would let you pack a lunch for me though! :)
I hate the back to school lunches. It is a heady round of wheat and cheese and then more wheat and cheese floolwed by threats of no more cookies if they do not eat their lunch.
good times good times
great post! l love back to school and everything that goes along with it. my kids are still in preschool so no lunches necessary, but i hope to be as successful as you are in preparing fun, yummy treats! can u post your gingerbread recipe?
I can't wait to have kids...
My mom was like that with lunches. (And most other things, too) She actually MADE me a lunchpail like Laura Ingalls's on Little House on the Prairie and then she'd pack me these elaborate lunches of homemade this and that. To be honest, I craved to be "like everyone else" with a Bewitched lunchbox or even just a plain paper bag filled with PBJ, a bag of chips, and two Chips Ahoys in a plastic baggy. I think carrying the pail (which was handpainted on the inside so lunch always smelled and tasted like polyeurethane, yum) was character-building, but that experience and many others like it (that I was decked out in homemade glory as Holly Hobby for Halloween when all my friends were plain old sheet-covered ghosts, for example) have made me reticent to impose my own need to distinguish myself from the herd upon my kid, who may in fact prefer at some point to you know, just be one of them, for Pete's sake. ;) I believe I feel a post coming on, now.
I totally understand even though I'm just packing a lunch for my hubby and not kids. We've gone from a summer consisting of mostly deep fried restaurant fare to home-made fancy salads that include things like chives. And I am expecting him to notice every ingredient!
I used to do the surprise, special, tons of work for me, lunches for my kids when they were in elementary. That is until I found out they were trading them for packaged cookies, cheese and crackers, fruit by the foot and fruit cups. Seeing I didn't feel the child 2 tables down really needed to feel MY love via my kid's lunch boxes, this practice soon quite. Now that they are teens I make them make their own, because then I know they'll eat it.
WOW! You are such a cool mom! I want to eat your lunches!
I can only imagine wanting to send the lvoe once Becca and Ethan get to school age.
A lovely piece but sadly not remotely true in our case.
I think that making packed lunches is my all time most loathsome chore. It doesn't matter what I put in them, I know that the contents will
a] not eaten
b] traded
c] brought back home after being baked for six hours to end up in the garbage disposal unit / compost heap.
What lucky kiddie winkies you have.
Best wishes
My mom was always so good about lunches she packed. They were delish and I would never trade them for anything. I am now only sending one son to high school as the others are grown and gone. So he buys his lunch. Somewhat easier to say the least. But not nearly so homey.
Constant Parenting as Public Performance Art?
I love that!
We came back from camping today and, to my horror, I realized that all stores are closed. We have no bread, no sandwich meat, no anything resembling actual lunch food. All I could think was, "What will their teachers think of the type of parent I am."
So I baked muffins.
Oh Beck--uh I mean Rebecca--this is delicious. I feel as if I have been fortified by the molasses in those cookies.
How healthy of you to admit your parenting as public performance art! I had to giggle at this. Your children will no doubt feel very loved and their teachers will know it too.
Can I have a gingerbread cookie? It's my favorite kind.
Would you adopt me?
Seriously though - this makes me remember my mom and remember just how much my mom loved me. Up until 4th grade my mom came to my school and took me home for lunch each day and then brought me back to school for the rest of the day. Ah the freedoms of small town life many many years ago.
I think that's a wonderful reason to prepare your kids lunches. Much like everything else in my life, I get really into it for a few days then turn off for a few days and so forth. So I think the teachers think of me as the mom who sometimes cooks really well and other times, say "A bag of peanuts and raisins?"
um, iron in ginger bread cookies? I had no idea! That's great, now I need to learn how to make them!
Up until High School (and even occassionally then) my mom would sneak a "napkin note" into my lunch. It could be as simple as a happy face, X's and O's, or a big heart drawn on a napkin but it showed me that she was thinking of me even when we weren't together. That is exactly what your well thought out lunches do for your kids.
"Their teachers will see their lunches, you see" - my husband mocks me for saying this exact thing! I'm so with you. I do a lot of planning for lunches, including baking mini muffins, special treats and homemade soups and chilis. My daughter begs me to buy those "Lunchables" and I just can't; I explain to her that they are not a healthy choice. Her little friend was sick from school one day and my daughter explained that it was probably because she ate those Lunchables almost everyday.
I would love to see some of your recipes!
The Boy's not in school yet, but my problem with making fancy food is that the Boy is just as likely to refuse to eat what I make - homemade OR from a can. If the food's from a can/freezer though, I get less angry when he doesn't eat it.
I have issues to work through apparently. And I'm lazy.
I am long finished my kid's lunch packing days and I hated doing them. Loved your post though. But even though I hated making lunches, I still tried to make them more fun by putting a riddle in it everyday with the answer written on the back. She and her friends had fun trying to think of the answer. And she thought I was brilliant thinking up all these riddles until she found my book one day!!!
You crack me up, Rebecca. But y'know what? You're right. I've seen teachers be incredibly snarky about the things that parents pack in kids' lunchboxes.
When I was a little girl, my mom would always write little notes to me on my napkin, telling me she loved me and that she was proud of me.
It saved her lots of time. Much quicker to write a note than make homemade soup and gingerbread cookies (although that sounds DELICIOUS and can I please, please, come over for lunch sometime?? lol!)
Sarah won't eat my muffins. Rotten kid.
Bet she'd eat yours tho!
Lovely, lovely post.
My daughter takes exactly two bites of whatever I pack. Two. Bites.
She is lucky to get more than a saltine at this point.
Once again, evidence that perhaps, you, rather than I, should be parenting my little dears.
Rebecca, I SOOO hear you! I, too, think "what will the teacher (lunchroom supervisor in my case) think?" But it drives me crazy that she eats so little, and then comes home cranky and starving! Then she tells me she gave away her cheese, granola bar and apples to her friend because she couldn't eat them. Then when I'm going through her backpack getting ready for the next day, I find her wilted and completely uneaten (not even licked!) sandwich. What did the kid eat today? You got it, the "special treat" I got her for the first day back...a small 28g package of cheese puffs. ARGH! Oh, and I totally lament the loss of PB&J and/or any kind of nut-containing snacks. I mean, I GET it, and I don't want any kids to get sick or die, but MAN! Life is a lot easier when you can use peanut butter!
I totally get where you are coming from on this. During the school year, my girls get healthy homemade snacks in their backpacks....and they wear ironed clothes. Ha, in the summer we may still eat healthy, but we definiely go wrinkly :)
It's funny, this universal desire to impress the teacher/lunchroom monitor/other adults in general, isn't it? Because it's really our way of drawing attention to how very incredible and special our kid is, not like all the others, whose mothers don't do homemade soups, etc.
As for me, I'm lucky. They come home for lunch with the French system. I'm lucky because I HATE packing lunches ;)
Until the Little Goat goes to school, there will only be the Husband to make lunches for, but he loves it! He's generally appreciative of my efforts and frequently goes on about how nice it is to have a homemade lunch (be it PB&J or leftovers from dinner) instead of having to eat in the cafeteria every day like most of his coworkers. "...and you should SEE what they eat....!!"
When my eldest (now starting high school - arrgh!) was starting Grade 1, I left it to my husband to assist with school lunches, as he had to pack his own anyway. That soon became the children packing their own lunches, with assistance in cutting fruit, and my responsibility was to ensure they had healthy items to take. So they all get what they want in their lunches, and in appropriate quantities, because they pack it themselves, and rarely does anything get thrown out or come home uneaten. This is one chore I am glad I don't have to do myself - my kids may have a different opinion!
Oh, I am so with you on the "lunch as a reflection on my parenting skills" thing. (Yes, obviously I really care about MY son)
I use to do this!!!! When my boy was younger! Now after years and years of him packing everything but the treat home I've surrendered.
He started high school this week and I give him money or let him pack his own.
Why I still seem to be the one cleaning it out every night is another story I guess.
I'm so glad that you are writing here. It brings out the best in you.