Lunch Lady

Lunch used to be my favorite meal. Back in the day, when RE at school and I was home alone, I would stop whatever project I was working on, open the fridge, grab a cold piece of leftover BBQ chicken pizza or whatever yumminess sat airtight in Tupperware, and get back to my project. Lunch was essentially a fingerprint-free stealth mission that took 30 seconds. The cherry on top was eating it in dead silence while the wheels spinning in my head took me places.

I’ve been on-again, off-again with lunch for a few years but I think we have finally broken up because of two words: Kid. Lunches.

Hey, I was invested. I had bento boxes and cookie cutters and all that jazz. I liked kid lunches the first thousand times I made them; I’m just weary in my old age. Part of it stems from the fact that Greg cooks five short-order breakfasts a day and my only contribution is cleaning up after him. By the time the range is degreased and the counters are sparkling the sun has hit high noon (cue the cowboy whistle sound one hears in old westerns before a duel) and even though I have a major list to attack it’s already time to face off with meal number two.

In my prime I was a member of a fun and classy Friday panini club that lasted almost eight weeks. (I still remember your pear tablecloth, J!) I’ve since lost my membership card and the best I can do is stand at the island eating two open-faced PB&Js while tossing eight mini corndogs in the oven. Then I play “Can’t Stop the Feeling” on Vevo to stop the screaming tug o’ war over the blue IKEA plate and we mimic the dancers until the oven dings. (I wanted to be the billionth person to watch it. We were nine million hits away, I got lazy for one week of summer, and now it's already at 1,065,000,000. Sheesh. You snooze, you lose 65 million, I guess!) At this point I try to not think about Greg eating ahi tuna at The Dodo, or Curry in a Hurry a mile from our store, or even Chick-fil-a in the solitude of his truck. 

The angel on my shoulder reminds me that giant jars of applesauce and vats of yogurt are a better bargain but the devil on my shoulder insists pouches and tubes are better for my sanity. I’m weak.

My last confession is that my kids are pretty picky lunch eaters once they turn two. They’ll eat fruit well enough but I can’t tell you the last time a carrot stick or pea pod was crunched by toddler teeth. They won’t eat deli meat. They only like one brand of string cheese. I serve a lot of unbalanced, abysmal kid lunches around here and might have to recreate the chapter from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to solve this cursed, daily riddle. I was my mom’s pickiest eater and I can vouch that karma is not only real but killing me softly.

In Galilee, 5,000 people were following the Savior. He asked His disciples where they might obtain bread to feed them. One of the disciples said a lad had brought five loaves and two fishes. The Lord blessed that food, and it fed 5,000. (See John 6:5–14.)

What does this have to do with motherhood? Think of the boy’s mother, who took time to pack his lunch before she sent him out the door. That’s such a motherly principle! We send them out the door with five loaves and two fishes, hoping it will be enough. Then the Lord blesses those loaves and fishes and produces miracles. (Browne 70)

I love this on multiple levels but especially at lunch level. Reading between the lines this boy had a pretty lousy lunch—even worse than a Lunchable and non-100% juice Capri Sun—but ate it in good company and, when called upon, helped facilitate a miracle. Maybe we’re a few amino acids short of a picnic around here but I’m confident my role as Power Packer goes above and beyond the food pyramid. I am feeding my kids the gospel and they are chewing on it, digesting it, and standing taller from it. My kids are not awesome eaters but they are still awesome. It is a load off my mother shoulders to have scriptural evidence that even the kid toting a colorless, uneaten, incomplete lunch can change the world as long as he knows how to stay close to the Savior.

Excerpt from "The Myth of Invisible Motherhood", Tiffanie Browne, Ensign, April 2018.

Photo of the 1985 Mormonad I ripped out of the New Era at age 9. I have loved this ad my whole life. I pinned on my freshman dorm's bulletin board at BYU and it is currently pinned on the bulletin board in my office. Like with actual push pins. Not on Pinterest! I can't help but think of Michelle, who taught me to bake wheat bread, when I look at it. 

Verse at the bottom of the Mormonad (in case you don't have hawk vision): A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. -Galatians 5:9

RE left for college last Wednesday. On Thursday I told the boys, “Sometimes when you are super sad it’s okay to eat Oreos for lunch,” and then served them a Costco sleeve of cookies and two glasses of milk for their meal. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad mother or a really good mother.