I'm re-reading a book by Anne Lamott on writing, and one of the exercises she has her writing classes do when the students find themselves creatively blocked is to talk about the lunches they had during their school years. It sounds like an inane enough task, but she proved to her students time and time again how the simplest task can open a world of inspiration.
When I was a kid in elementary school my brother and I were lucky enough to live close enough to our school that our mom was able to come at lunch time and pick us up so that we could have a home-made mid-day meal. I loved this part of the day, not just because I've been a notorious "good eater" (which means I'll eat pretty much anything in front of me) from the very beginning, but because lunchtime at school was like recess at school, only worse... you know, 'cause it was longer. Eating at home allowed me to escape teasing from my classmates, and the overwhelming loneliness of having to eat lalone in a gymnasium full of kids. Lunch at home always involved soup of some kind, usually tomato with milk to make it extra creamy. Sandwiches would also grace the table, usually roast beef or ham. I loved bologna, and even to this day bologna sandwiches and tomato soup make me long for simpler times.My mom would get everything ready and set out for us before she left to collect us, even breaking up soup crackers in our bowls so that we wouldn't have to. This MAY have been more for her OCD than for us, as I now know the mess a child can make with even one saltine. This early preparation only backfired on us once, when our dog, a golden lab named Dale, propped herself up against the table and proceeded to eat every speck of food that my mom had prepared. She was definitely in the doghouse for awhile after that.
Every once in awhile, my mom would surprise us with a lunch packed in a brown paper bag and tucked into our backpacks. She would tell us that our dad would be coming to pick us up for lunch instead of her, and to make sure we didn't take our time in the hallway because he was coming from his work to get us and couldn't waste any time. I'm not sure why these random dates would happen - maybe our dad wanted to spend time with us? Maybe our mom thought he SHOULD? Regardless of the reason, every couple of months our dad would pull up outside our school in his dirty old work van. He'd be wearing his once-white, now multi-coloured overalls and a gray t-shirt underneath. Sometimes he had a beard, sometimes he didn't. We'd pile into the front bench seat of his van, full of paint cans and tools and smelling strongly of chemicals and he'd drive us back to his work, a government-run construction and painting company on the other side of the highway that ran past town. My dad was a journeyman painter, a title that meant nothing to me until I was old enough to understand that tradespeople had to go to school, too. My dad, brother, and I would sit in the worker's lunch room, which we usually had to ourselves, and eat our lunch. Maybe we talked... I can't remember. All I can really recollect, and mostly because I am experiencing some of the same feeling right now, is a sense of discomfort, a shroud of anxiety. These visits were never fun, at least not for me. I would feel so awful and uncomfortable and aware of every single passing second during these meals that even being in a vehicle that smells slightly of paint can be crippling to my mental state. To this day I can't figure out why I reacted so negatively, still react so negatively, to these small blips on the tracking monitor of my life. Truthfully, I haven't actually sat down and maybe-d out myself to come to some kind of conclusion. Maybe I will one day.
For now, I give kudos to Anne Lamott. Once again, she has inspired me to write.
