Shaved Meats, Piled High: November 2019
#IfIWereYourMom
Three years ago, my daughter started first grade at the neighborhood school, which meant I no longer had to make a lunch. Baltimore City public schools provide a free lunch for all kids, which is darn cool. My daughter loved the lunches; I loved being liberated from daily lunch-making duty. Everyone was happy.
Until this fall, when my daughter told me she would prefer to carry a lunch. I balked at first. I ignored her. But it quickly became apparently that my swiftly-growing kid was not getting enough to eat at school, in part because once she waited in line for her lunch, she had so little time to eat it. I felt like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III -- "Just when I thought I was out . . . etc etc etc"
To my amazement, I LOVE making my daughter's lunch. It has long been my habit to rise at 6 a.m., in order to enjoy a quiet hour to myself. Adding this small chore to my routine of watching a Bravo show isn't that big of a deal. Better yet -- it kickstarts my creative day.
For one thing, I make a daily lunchbox note, which I often post to Twitter with the hashtag #IfIWereYourMom. Some people have accused me of being "performative" in my parenting and -- guilty as charged, I guess. I'm a big ol' showoff. A troll on Twitter tried to shame me for feeding my kid "junk," based on the photo above. #SorryNotSorry
But even making the lunch itself taps into my creativity because my daughter, unlike me, craves variety. So I have to vary the sandwiches and snacks, even as I try to find the right balance between nutritional fare and treats. I believe everybody needs daily treats.
Once the lunch is done, there usually is a stressful hour of getting ready for school, but by 8:15 a.m., I am at my laptop, ready to write. And, strange to say, the whole magilla -- making the lunch, writing the note, tweeting out a photo of that lunch/note -- sets me up nicely for the day. The lunch and the lunchbox note are little writing warm-ups.
My personal favorite was made during the summer, when my daughter attended a musical theater camp and I bowed to her demand for a Lunchable. She, however, was not amused by my parody of "There's No Business Like Show Business." Everyone's a critic.
READ/READING: How To Be A Family, Dan Kois; A Book I Do Not Wish To Name, Author I Dislike; Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, by Duchess Goldblatt; Small Fry, Lisa Brennan-Jobs; Dear Girls, Ali Wong; The Warehouse, Rob Hart.
REREADING: The "Marcy" books by Rosamond du Jardin.
ME, ME, ME: Lady in the Lake named one of the best of 2019 by Kirkus and Publishers Weekly; And When She Was Good named one of the best mysteries of the DECADE by CrimeReads.
Laura Lippman
November 2019