The Simple Joy Of Making Lunch For My Kids

"Then my parents divorced and my mother left. No more packed lunches. It wasn’t long before school lunches, with their extremely limited menu and less than exciting flavors, became tedious."

Photo by Wasa Crispbread on Unsplash

by Justin Rosario

It’s a curious thing how a single book or movie can have a profound impact on a developing mind. I suppose this is why Republicans are so eager to limit the books children are exposed to. Limit the world they see, control their future development. 

But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today, I want to talk about “Bread and Jam for Frances” written by Russell Hoban in 1964, and how it shaped my life and the lives of my children when I was just 6 years old.

Bread and Jam for Frances

“Bread and Jam for Frances” is a cute little book for grades K-3 with adorable illustrations by Hoban’s wife at the time, Lillian. It’s a simple story about a little badger named Frances who is a very picky eater. So picky, in fact, that she decides she only wants to eat, can you guess?, bread and jam.

Frances’ very patient mother decides to teach her a lesson by continuing to make the rest of the family delicious food but only giving Frances the bread and jam she claims to want. As an adult, you can probably see where this is going. Frances quickly tires of eating bread and jam. After a tearful dinner in which everyone else is having spaghetti and meatballs and Frances has a plate of bread and jam, our picky eater gets over her pickiness and starts eating other foods again. Hooray! A happy ending.

I had both the book and an audio version of it. I cannot for the life of me remember if it was a cassette tape or a record. Since I was only 6 or so and I remember playing small 45s like Rolf Harris over and over, it was probably a record. Records were, surprisingly, less prone to destruction than a cassette in the hands of a small child. I spent hours reading and listening to “Francis” and I remember it more than almost any other book from my childhood. 

Considering the story is about a picky eater and the lesson is about trying new things, you’d think that would be what appealed to me. But I was by no means a picky eater as a child. There were things I didn’t like (liver) and things I stopped eating when I found out what they were (cow’s tongue). There were foods with textures that didn’t appeal to me (pasteles) and foods  with names that dissuaded me from eating them (blood sausage). But, mostly, I’d eat whatever was put in front of me or at least try it. 

So the moral of the story is not what caught my attention and held on with vise-like intensity. It was the lunches.

Brown bagging it

When I first started going to school, my mother made me lunch and I brought it with me in brown paper bags. We couldn’t afford a snazzy Star Wars lunchbox, you see. We also couldn’t afford much in the way of lunch. That, or my mother wasn’t particularly creative in her meal preparation. Considering my mother was not known for her cooking skills and we were struggling financially, it’s quite likely a combination of the two.

Most of my lunches were peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese. Or a cheese sandwich with mayo. I would regularly “lose” my homepacked lunch so I would be able to eat a school lunch that, to my young eyes, looked far more appetizing.

Then my parents divorced and my mother left. No more packed lunches. It wasn’t long before school lunches, with their extremely limited menu and less than exciting flavors, became tedious. The grass is always greener, right? 

This is where “Bread and Jam for Francis” really influenced my thinking about school lunch although I do not know if I was aware of it at the time. The lunches in “Frances” are…extravagant. Here’s one:

 “I have a cream-cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread,” said Albert. “And a pickle to go with it. And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that. And a Thermos of milk. And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine. And a cup of custard and a spoon to eat it with.”

Hoban then spends three (!!!) pages describing Albert eating his lunch.

Here’s another:

The next day when the bell rang for lunch, Albert said, “What do you have today?”
Well,” said Frances, laying a paper doily on her desk and setting a tiny vase of violets in the middle of it, “let me see.” She arranged the lunch on the doily. “I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup,” she said. “And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread. I have celery, carrot sticks, black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery. And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries. And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with.”

Compare that to bologna and cheese in a brown paper bag and you can see why I was fascinated with the lunches in “Bread and Jam for Frances.” These are ridiculous lunches that no child would ever have in a lunch box in real life. A doily? A vase with violets? Seriously? But that wasn’t the point and 6-year-old me certainly didn’t get it. I thought it would be the most wonderful thing in the world to have lunches like that. I suppose that really cemented itself in my mind when I finally realized we were poor.

Poverty leaves a mark

I have to give credit to my parents, I literally had no idea we were poor until I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. Part of this was my general obliviousness but they made sure my brother and I had food, clothes, and a roof over our heads at all times. They weren’t expensive clothes and when our pants ripped, my mom sewed patches on. We didn’t eat brand-name cereal but generic Frosted Flakes were just fine with me so it didn’t matter. I simply was not aware of being poor until we hit a rough spot.

I don’t know the details but we must have run out of money for food which had never happened before (and never happened again after). But for one week, the only food we had was bread, government cheese, and cabbage. So we ate grilled cheese and cabbage soup for a week. To this day, I cannot eat cabbage soup for the bad memories it invokes. Curiously, grilled cheese doesn’t provoke any reaction at all. But that was when I understood how precarious our position was.

It didn’t last. My father was promoted to a supervisory position in the NY Sanitation Dept. and finished his certification to be a CPA, meaning he could bring in extra money doing people’s taxes. By the time I was 12 or so, we seemed to be well past the rough spots. But that sort of thing leaves a mark. 

I wouldn’t realize how deep that memory ran until I had kids of my own and it was time for them to go to school.

School lunch for my kids? Over my dead body!

Jordan first started going to “school” sometime after his second birthday. Obviously, it wasn’t a regular school but rather NYC’s Early Intervention program for special needs kids. Trust me when I say it was invaluable. 

Regardless, Jordan was now going to school and while we could have paid a small amount of money for the school to provide lunch, my reaction was somewhat stronger than I would have thought, i.e.: There was no fucking way I was going to let Jordan eat school lunches! What kind of parent would I be?, etc., etc.

Mind you, I had no idea what the lunches were like. It had been 20 years since I had seen (or smelled) a school lunch. For all I knew, they could have been glorious trays of delicious food. Turned out that they hadn’t changed much in two decades but I didn’t know that and it absolutely did not matter. I was going to make Jordan lunch and that was that.

When Anastasia started school a few years later, it was the same. There was zero chance she would be eating school lunches. I would prepare their food, pack it, and off they would go. A main dish, a fruit, a veggie, a drink, and a dessert. Every single time. Jordan’s teachers would regularly comment on how delicious and healthy his lunches always looked and I was absurdly pleased by this.

In Virginia, both Jordan and Anastasia went to a school where lunches were free and I still made their lunches every day. I didn’t even realize the full extent of my thought process at the time. I was subconsciously equating packing a proper lunch with being a good parent. Sure, we could have saved a whole lot of money by not making lunches at a time when we were seriously struggling financially but, goddamit, my kids would know I cared! That is deeply unfair (and not true in the slightest) to families who need to rely on free school meals but growing up poor can do funny things to your perceptions. 

Over time, this mild pathology became more pronounced. I started to make “special lunches” for the kids to take to school. I would make ramen from scratch. Or sushi. Or I would bake fresh bread for their sandwiches. I would add little flourishes to the packing. It wasn’t as fancy as a doily or a vase of flowers but it was the best I could do and it was enough. They would love to show off their special lunches to their friends and eat a delicious homemade meal. Especially Lila who usually had school lunches and hated them with a passion.

It was actually Lila that made me realize what I was projecting onto lunch and that dredged up “Bread and Jam for Frances” from my memory. As the surrogate father of a 14-year-old, I am acutely aware that she is going to need less of me in her life as she goes out into the world on her own. That’s what teens do. That doesn’t make it any less sad but it is what it is.

In the meantime, every meal and snack I make for her has become that much more precious, especially since she is starting to cook on her own. Every time she asks me to make something for her is one more time I can be “Daddy” for the little girl who is growing up way too fast (I’m told all children do this eventually).

That’s a lot of psychological baggage to put on a plate of food. Then again, as far as Jordan, Anastasia, and Lila are concerned, they grew up with a loving father/father figure who made delicious lunches for them and was always happy to do it. Maybe someday, if and when they have children of their own, they’ll think back to the lunches they ate and understand the care and love that was part of their lives. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll pass that care and love on and feel the same simple joy I feel every time I’m in the kitchen making food for my family.

Read an excerpt from the latest for Banter Members:

Lindsey Graham's Horrific New Bet

by Ben Cohen

Of all the Republicans who supported Donald Trump throughout his presidency, Lindsey Graham is one of the most worst offenders. When Trump was running for president in 2016, Graham called him a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”. Trump, according to Graham, was “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party.”

"You know how you make America great again?” Graham said on CNN. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell".

Months later, Graham became the new president’s golfing buddy, confidant, and new best friend. During Trump’s tenure in the White House, Graham stuck with him through every racist, criminal, treasonous act, covered up for his grotesque incompetence, then refused to vote to impeach him after he tried to overthrow the election and incited a coup in January of 2021.

Graham and Trump playing golf at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

“Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot,” Graham told Axios. “I still consider him a friend.”

Now that it appears Trump almost certainly violated the Espionage Act and could be facing jail time, Graham is back out on a right wing media tour defending the ex president — and making a new, horrific bet on the future of the country.

“Most Republicans — including me — believe when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him,” the South Carolina Republican told Fox News’ this past weekend.

“There is a double standard when it comes to Trump,” Graham went on.

“If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street.”

Let’s take a moment to decipher what Graham is saying here.

Continue reading this piece here.