The Mind of ~Ifer

I know it waits for me at the bottom of the lunch bag.  I dread, and yet need, for it to be there.  Maybe she forgot today.  Maybe she realized I am grown up now.  Maybe I secretly hope neither of those is true.

I slowly begin to unpack my lunch with all the assumed sophistication of a teenager.  I find the peanut butter and jelly sandwich first, of course.  This had been the main entree in my bag lunches for as many lunches as I could remember.  Mentally crossing my fingers, I reach in for the snack.  The snack gods must be smiling at me today; I scored some homemade oatmeal cookies.  I carefully unwrap the foil from my can of Coke and lay all the food out in front of me.

Still it haunts me, left inside the bag.  The simple white paper napkin taunts me with its presence.  Even my fanatical obsession with using a napkin at every meal cannot entice me to pull it out of the bag, because I know.  I know she wrote on it.

She always writes on my napkins.  Usually a short note of encouragement, a smiley face, or an all-caps “I LOVE YOU!”, I should not be ashamed to display the napkin.  But I am a teenager, and that means that everything ashames and embarrasses me, so it remains in the bottom of the bag.

I finish up my lunch, down the last sip of Coke, and get up to throw away my trash.  Slowly, nonchalantly, I walk to the trash can.  I drop everything in except my bag.  Glancing around to make sure that nobody is close, that nobody is watching, I reach in and pull out the napkin.  I have only a brief second to glance at the message before someone will notice what I am doing.  I feel like an actor on the stage that forgot her lines, although the reality of the situation is that nobody really cares what I am doing at that trash can.  I unfold the napkin, glance down, crumble it up, throw it away.

I walk away from the trash can secure in the knowledge that my secret is safe for another day.  Nobody saw, nobody knows.  Although I dare not show it on my face for fear that someone will question me, there is a little child dancing inside.  My mom wrote me another note today, you see.  My mom told me that she loves me.

As much as I pretend to wish she would miss a day, my heart is warmed to know that she didn’t forget me.  My mom remembered.  My mom thought of me.  My mom loves me.

This is another post for the Weekly Challenge. Today’s challenge was to write a quick memory of a school lunch. Please check it out!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.