On Hot Lunch

The boy who wouldn’t eat his strawberries now eats hot lunch. He started a few weeks ago, first asking what was on the menu, the asking to try it out.

“Of course,” I’d said the first time he asked. “You can get it whenever you like.”

He’d smiled at that, a big wide smile that had less to do with lunch and more to do with growing up. “It’ll be easier for you too, Mom. It’ll be less work in the morning.”

I had to fight the urge to hug him for that, my boy who always thinks of others before himself.

“I am always happy to make you lunch,” I said instead. “But I’m proud you want to try something new.”

So that day he’d marched into school ready to try the cheese pizza. The verdict? Just okay. He felt that way about the cheeseburger too. And the grilled cheese. But the chicken nuggets were a hit. So much so that the first thing he mentioned today was chicken nugget day.

“You don’t have to make me lunch today, just snack,” he said proudly. Then he turned to his older sister. “You should really try them. They’re very good.”

His older sister is a picky eater. We all knew she’d choose lunch from home.

But I could see my son stand taller when he asked her. Finally he was the authority on something she wasn’t. 

So when she said no, he just shrugged and continued going about his morning routine. As I finished my own chores, I watched my kindergartner get dressed, pull on his socks, and track down his coat. Small tasks, but each done with precision, a desire to get it right.

“School’s really not that long,” he’d said to me a couple weeks back. “We do some work in the morning, but then it’s lunch and recess and really it’s a lot of fun.”

He’d seemed so mature that day. But this morning he seemed even older, much more like his big sister than the preschooler in the stroller. And while I reveled in his newfound confidence, hiding tears of pride as I dropped him at the school door, part of me yearned for the long days with him by my side.

Three o’clock comes fast, I reminded myself as I walked away. And I wondered if he, too, was thinking the same thing.