by Cathy
"Welcome to Ari's Food Pantry. We are here to serve YOU."
This is the sign that should be plastered to my younger daughter's lunch box and snack bag.
Everyday, I pack her lunchbox with a brand new bottled water, a full sandwich and a sandwich-sized bag full of some crunchy snack. Everyday after school, she brings it home completely empty. Ditto goes for her snack bag, which I stuff to its zippered seams with all sorts of yummy snacks in case she gets hungry throughout the day or in case she has to stay in after school for any reason we can't pick her up on time.
I am Greek after all, so my main worry in life is that the people I care for have enough food to eat. The first question my kids get from me after school is, "Did you finish your lunch?" Then comes, "How about your snack?" And then, "Are you hungry now?" Then possibly a, "Well, if you're hungry just eat from the snacks you didn't have during the day." Once we are home, I start up again with, "Do you guys want to have a snack? Dinner won't be ready for another couple of hours," worried that my kids will starve to death if they aren't eating something every hour on the hour. Don't get me wrong; my kids are the perfect weight for they're size and can even stand to gain a pound or two according to my Greeky-Greek parents, but making sure my family and friends are well fed is not only in my DNA, it's in my culture.
In the beginning of the school year when Ari would bring home these empty sacks, I thought, 'Oh great! She's eating all her food!' Then as time went by and I saw that she NEVER brought any leftovers back, I immediately got suspicious that she was just throwing stuff away. When I confronted her about this, she fully denied it.
"Nooooo! Mommy! I AM eating everything!"
"Remember I told you many times, do not throw ANY food away, okay? If you don't finish something, just put it back in your bag and bring it back, okay?"
"Mommy, I AM!"
"No you're not!" I countered. "There's never anything in your bags when you bring them home."
"Mommy!"
"Should I call your teacher and ask her if you're throwing stuff away?"
"NO! She doesn't know. She's...not there during snack and lunch." she grappled.
So the other day after school, I asked the girls to take out their lunch and snack bags and leave them on the counter for me to repack for the next day. Ever since Bella was in kindergarten, she brought back every morsel of every food item I gave her that she didn't eat at school. She never thought to throw anything away. Ari on the other hand, seemed like she was into some sneaky activity. She swung her lunchbox in front of me and said, "Mommy, here it is but don't get mad, okay?"
I opened it up and it was full of nothing but air. Then I opened her snack bag. Same.
"Where are all the snacks I packed for you today?" I asked, going after her. I had purposely packed way more than a five-year old could possibly fit in her tiny, fist-sized stomach, just to test her.
She lets out an exasperated, drawn out sigh and slumped her shoulders while looking skyward, as if she was being majorly inconvenienced by this question.
"Ari...just tell me the truth. I don't want you to lie to me because I'll be more upset then."
"But mommy, Jesus is watching."
"Exactly. That's why you can't lie. And???"
"I shared my snacks with some of the other girls. Alana ate the strawberries, Nicole at the graham crackers and I ate the granola bar."
"But why? Didn't they have their own snacks?"
"Yeah but they were hungry and didn't have enough snacks. So I shared."
"OK, that's fine," I replied. "But is that the truth? You're not throwing away food?"
"NO!"
I wondered if this was all true, all this time. Could she really, in fact, have been feeding her whole classroom with the plentiful snacks I packed every morning? Was she trading snacks? Was SHE eating anything or just dishing it out like a one-woman soup kitchen? I do know that she was, at some point, and may still be throwing stuff out since one of my small kitchen spoons never made its way back home, Tupperware had gone missing and water bottles, which she hardly drank from, were not coming back either.
"That's okay if you share but I want to make sure YOU are eating, okay? I don't want you going hungry all day by feeding everyone else in your class."
Then it hit me. She's giving food to other people? She's making sure her friends are well fed?
Ha! What can I say? I guess that cultural DNA strand is one of her Greek-dominant ones.
