Close But No Arugula

Hands waved wildly in the air, the group burst into a fit of giggles and Kate was right in the middle of the madness. Wonderful, as she occasionally has difficulty connecting with her classmates, the antics of first graders being somewhat frivolous to my child who prefers Betsy Ross to Fancy Nancy. Her teacher was encouraged as Kate, her frequent lunch partner, sat with a group of girls, playing a rousing game of Who Likes?.

"Who likes pizza?", hands everywhere!
"Who likes hot dogs?", another fit of hand waving!
"Who likes macaroni and cheese?", it was becoming contagious!
"Who likes arugula?", one lone hand, plenty of silence.

Her teacher shook her head, so close, so very close.

Two Chickpeas in a Pod

My daughter, the one who uses her finger to wipe clean the communal hummus dish at the local tavern, the one who stuffs herself with pita and carrots when presented with a full dish of pureed chickpeas, will not eat hummus on a sandwich. The tortilla with hummus and grated carrots returns, untouched, in her lunchbox at the end of the day.

"Mom, I do not like hummus", says Mary.

"Mary, you love hummus", says her mother.

"Not on a sandwich. I do not like hummus on a sandwich or in a tortilla, only in a bowl."

We argue, this is the most illogical thing I have ever heard. This makes no sense at all, it's the same stuff, why on earth would it matter how it was presented? At six she has lost her rational mind, hummus is hummus, be it in a bowl or spread onto a sandwich. She has been eating hummus for years, why now must she voice an opinion as to how it is served? This is how the power struggle is to begin, with hummus? Imagine what our life is going to be like at 16 when the issues grow to privacy and independence, imagine the challenges in front of us if we begin the battle now, at only six, over something as silly as hummus. How can I possibly be expected to communicate with one so ridiculous, clearly I have done something wrong, she is irrational and belligerent. Life together is going to be difficult if this is where she chooses to assert her will. The entire episode exhausts me and I'm not pleased.

In her lunchbox Mary finds a tortilla spread with avocado and grated carrots. She devours it, clearly preferring this over the battle rich hummus option.

"Mom, thank you, that was the greatest lunch ever". High praise from the one who, the day before, was ready to go on a hunger strike to defend her no sandwich position. The line in the sand moves much more smoothly when someone returns home this happy.

"I'll have the Village Veggie but swap the hummus for avocado please", says Mary's mother at the neighborhood sandwich shop. The line in the sand is swept away when one realizes that they have been ordering the same sandwich, for at least 10 years, no hummus, add avocado.

Because really, I just don't like hummus on my sandwich.

How Many More Days?

Twice this past week I forgot to make lunches. Wednesday morning, at 7:30, as I stood in robe and towel wrapped head, Jack, valedictorian of the Boy Scout preparedness school, looked at me and said, "lunches?".

Our out the door on time departure is 7:45; 7:50 if we race, drive with wild abandon and accept that the dash into school will happen as the second bell sounds. At 7:30 the lunch boxes sat empty and I, still dripping, was lost as to how they got that way.

At 6:00 last night, elbow deep into a flower pot, the little girls covered in dirt, the second layer firmly adhered by the sticky remains of a strawberry fruit pop, I suddenly realized that no homework had been done, not one page. No dinner prepared, no baths taken, no simple addition completed, we were one hour away from bed time, a time far too early but dictated by the horrific hour we awake each day to begin the race to school, and still completely engaged in the work of summer. As with the weather, our priorities had shifted overnight, from sight words and fractions to sunflowers and popsicles.

It's warm and sunny. It was 91 degrees in Chicago yesterday, only beaten in the mercury by the consistently tropical Minneapolis. An aberration I know but one we embrace. The girls are wearing shorts and sundresses, the dog is panting, Jack is griping about the heat and we are ready for summer. After nine months, wonderful months of paper and paint, letters and numbers, music and dance, it's time for sand and sunblock.

The race to the end of the hall is as clear to me now as it was thirty years ago. Bag stuffed with every precious work I spent the year creating, I ran at the final bell to sunshine and swimming pools, the last few weeks of being trapped in a classroom absolute torture. The long windows on the side of the building opened to allow in a stifling warm breeze, and with it, the sound of the custodian mowing and the smell of freshly cut grass. From the inside looking out summer seemed like years away, and then it magically appeared and my days were spent not at a desk but immersed in whatever water I could find.Summer, when I was five, went on forever, in fact almost all my days were summer, with just a few weeks of cold thrown in to celebrate Christmas. Lemonade stands with Stephanie, gymnastic shows with Mary and Josie, hours spent in the church parking lot learning to ride my new bike, afternoons saddled behind Dad on his horse, and days upon days of doing nothing, my summer lasted forever. As it should, because you only have one summer to spend being five, best to make the most of it.

What You See

Consistency.

Who is Who?

Mary's?

or Kate's?

Without looking at the outside I know exactly whose lunch box I am opening. They never surprise me, one is reassembled and neat, food gone, hand wipe used, garbage removed. The other is a mess. Food remains, but not in the container, cheese ground into the seams, raisins in the pocket, the outside pocket, an apple core or orange skin, and always an unused hand wipe.

As in so much of their daily life, they are freakishly consistent, and so like their parents it shocks us still. One is methodical, the other scattered, one is thorough, the other speedy. Doing homework takes twice as long as it should; while one must choose the color appropriate pencil for every task (all apple questions are answered in red pencil) the other has colored everything on the page, including her name, in brown pencil, and is now moving on to the next task, but only after dabbing up the milk she spilled, on the homework, with her shirt.

My husband has never, in his entire life, turned in homework late, or with food attached. My homework was frequently eaten by the dog.

Lost and Found

In the first three days of school, Mary lost a napkin, a small food container and a spoon. Things are improving, yesterday she came home with with all things intact and, in addition, a nasty plastic wrapper, buried at the bottom of her lunchbox. One sniff and I knew, Little Debbie Nutty Bars (we ate them in college, I blame my roommate, she of the late night hot donut love). This was not native, it was not nestled amongst the hummus and carrots and wormy peaches that filled the lunchbox in the morning. She insisted she had not eaten the offensive treat, and I might believe her although her blueberry box was empty, she had given them all to Adrianna who had never had a blueberry before. Was this a culinary exploration themed swap?

Packing the lunchbox every morning makes me feel like the consummate mother. The challenge of assembling a well balanced and nutritious lunch that can easily be consumed in 15 minutes is invigorating, and exhausting. My own mother has never packed a lunchbox, she could barely get herself out of bed before school started, leaving me in the lunch line while all my friends dug into Fluffernutter sandwiches and bologna and Doritos. All I wanted in the world was a Carl Buding chicken sandwich and Pringles, that was my idea of lunchroom heaven. Instead I faced canned green beans and chicken pieces with mushy apple stuff and warm milk.

The real joy is unpacking the remains at the end of the day. Mary transfers food from one container to the other, leaving most of it uneaten. One day she ate only applesauce, although there are the telltale nibble marks in everything. Yesterday I tried pureed black beans with spinach and garlic, and a smidgen of cream cheese for smoothness, spread on a tortilla and rolled. There was no trace of the tortilla in Kate's box, I had found a winner, or maybe not, "that thing? I threw that in the garbage", although Mary had eaten at least half of hers, perhaps she liked it. Or possibly Adrianna had never had pureed beans and spinach on a tortilla; what Mary got in return is the real question.

No Plastique in Paris

It's back, the plastic we loath has returned. First it was bottles, rows and rows of bottles, and all the bottle accouterments, filling the top rack in the dishwasher. Next came the truly awful sippy cups. As if the plastic wasn't bad enough, most came adorned with some caricature that in no way contributed to the functionality of the sippy cup. And as a note, sippy? Really? We want our children to be intelligent and yet we freely use a word like sippy?

And now, after a few short yet blissful plastic free years we are here, plastic lunch box components. The thought of tossing away a gazillion plastic bags annually horrifies me so I went with the less awful option, plastic containers of different shapes and sizes, to be reused daily and eventually recycled. But they must be cleaned, and so now our dishwasher, so briefly free of plastic, is full each day with red and yellow and green boxes, and their matching lids.

The real problem, aside from the unsightly nature of plastic, and the feel that it just is never really clean, is that our dishwasher does not dry plastic. It refuses. This machine that requires not one thing to be wiped clean before it is loaded, the same one that just might polish the silver if I were to find the right button, does not dry plastic. It looks nice, it's sleek and snappy and it does just a stellar job with all our other dirty items, but the pricey European dishwasher has a thing against plastic, and I just can't blame it.

This leads me to believe that Europeans simply do not use plastic, certainly not to the extent that Americans do. We have embraced plastic, I believe if it was possible we would all live in plastic houses, or at least families with children would, and to some extent we do; have you seen the amount of plastic gifted to people with small children? It's all brightly colored and unattractive, but it's easy to clean, hooray!

Or possibly school children in France are offered lunch choices that do not make their parents recoil in terror. Here's an example of lunch offered recently in a suburban Paris school district: cucumbers with garlic and fine herbs, Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil, couscous, organic yogurt and an apple. And here is an example of what was recently offered at Mary and Kate's school: nachos, Tony's sausage pizza, cheesy mac with turkey ham, green beans, diced peaches and animal crackers. School children in France are given at least 30 minutes for lunch, as compared to the 20 minutes allotted at our school. In that 20 minutes the kindergartners must walk to the lunchroom, go through the lunch line, wait again for milk, and then spend the remaining time inhaling the choices they have made, or the food I have packed. It appears that lunch in France is offered as part of the education, not just a quick refueling session to keep children awake in the afternoon.

And so, despite our tres chic European brand dishwasher, we still live in the land of Kenmore appliances. The children find, in their lunch boxes each day, small plastic containers full of modified American lunch staples while I, at the end of each day stand drying the horrid things, cursing the American school lunch program, and the smug dishwasher who knows it doesn't have to be this way.