lambscapearchitect: let's do lunch

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Eloise is taking her lunch to school every day now. I was pretty excited about this idea and put some preparations in order.

We picked out a lunch box along with coordinating water bottle, snack containers, thermos, and backpack. We went to the store and got the organic milk, the organic apples, and all the healthy snacks and items that would be good for lunches and the daily required snack. We made sure there were no peanuts in anything (which bugs the hell out of me and takes many easy options off the table). We got a little frozen pack, naturally, shaped like a pink flower, that goes in the lunch box to keep things out of a botulism danger zone. I got some cute little papers to write a note everyday. I even sewed little reusable 'baggies' so we wouldn't have to waste ziplocs everyday.

Even I was starting to get annoyed by me.

As I am getting the 2011 version of lunch ready every day, I can't help but think of the 1979 lunches we used to have as kids, and laugh. My dad would surely get a kick out of my version.

I'm sure my mom made thousands of lunches throughout our school years but my dad's lunches are the ones that stick out in my mind. My dad's lunches were epic.

Some of my all time favorites from my dad were the always classic CheezWhiz and mustard sandwich. A close second was the peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich. Bologna and Fritos were almost always present but a few times my dad broke up taco shells from the previous night's dinner and tried to pass them off as Tostitos in our lunch.

We were always a brown bag family. Some days we would run out of brown paper bags so my dad would pack it in an empty bread bag. There was always a handful of breadcrumbs lingering in the bottom, getting all over everything. The whole lunch would be slip down to the bottom of this 2 feet long bag as we carried it, creating a nunchuck-like effect. Incidentally, I think those might have been the same bread bags that we wore over our shoes inside our winter boots.

Sometimes we would be out of baggies so everything would be wrapped in aluminum foil. I tell you, it was a hard week when a baggie shortage/foil lunch one time coincided with having some cavities filled at the dentist.

You wouldn't think that school lunches would matter that much to kids but I still think about the other kids' lunches that I coveted. I always wanted a real lunch box and a Campbell's Soup thermos. I always wanted my sandwiches cut on the diagonal into triangles. I always wanted a Capri Sun in my lunch. I longed for a cute little note written on a napkin---or a napkin, for that matter. I never mentioned any of these things to my parents. I think the response would have been something like "you get what you get and you don't get upset" or "some kids don't even get to eat lunch" or "when you have your own kids, you can make them whatever kind of lunches you want, Elizabeth".

Well, that is what I have been doing

Every day, as I pack the 'pefect' lunch with all the 'right' things in it, I know that somewhere, my dad is rolling his eyes and breaking apart a taco shell.