The Last Sandwich
I made my son 2,236 peanut butter sandwiches, but he didn’t need the last one.
Photo of the napkin that never left the house.
A high school graduation looms at my house this week, this time for my second child, a son. It feels like just last month I was bringing 7 pounds, 12 oz of him home from the hospital. I still remember the volume of his cry when they took him from my womb. Even as a pediatrician, I had never heard a newborn cry that loud.
This particular child was a fairly picky eater in his younger years. He still doesn’t love a gooey, mushy casserole. Cherry tomatoes are always pushed to the side of the plate.
For most of his preschool years, if you asked him what he wanted for lunch, you would know the answer before he answered — big, dark eyes looking up, slight lisp in his little voice.
“Peanutbutterjellycheetikmulk,” he would say. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A mozzarella cheese stick. And a glass of milk.
We would mix it up a little bit with some chicken nuggets, various fruits, some bell peppers, but this meal was frequently his base. In a way, it was easy. Family members and friends knew what he liked. He knew what he liked, and still does.
Judgers go ahead and judge, but I have still sent a paper-bag lunch to school with my kids through high school. There are close to 3,000 teenagers in their high school, and this was something I could do to make their lives easier (and ensure they got two servings of fruit mid-day).
I know they are old enough to make their own lunches. I know some of you are thinking I am enabling them. If you need to quit reading and judge me, go ahead. I make my kids’ high school lunches. There, I said it.
My son was in public school for 13 years, about 172 school days per year. This means that last week I made my 2,236th peanut butter and jelly sandwich for him. Over 2,000 sandwiches. Over 4,000 pieces of bread.
Something about this last lunch made me so sad last Friday morning. I have superstitiously written “I 💗U” on every school lunch napkin for 13 years. In elementary school, it could be on the front of the napkin with a note. “Have a great day!” or “Hope your test goes well!”
In middle school, the “I 💗 U” was written in a more stealth way, inside the napkin to spare my children the ridicule of the middle school lunch table. Same goes for high school, but I always wrote it, thinking if I did, they would somehow carry my love with them through the school day. That it would keep them safe.
I’m also a count-downer, so at the end of the school year, I would count down. “15 more days!” Then 14, 13, 12, and all the way down to “ZERO DAYS! So proud of you!”
Last Friday, I made the last sandwich. I put it in a Ziplock bag since all the sandwich cubes are, I’m sure, on the floor of my son’s car. I added a bag of goldfish. A cheese stick. A Kind bar. Some cotton candy grapes and a sliced apple with a drizzle of lemon juice to keep it from browning.
Then I wrote the napkin. “I 💗 U. Last day of high school! I’m so proud of you!” The paper bag and his water bottle waited on the kitchen island, and I went to dress for work.
I was in the back of the house when my boys left. “Bye! Love you!” I heard as the front door slammed and they went to school. I emerged from my room ready for work. Stopping by the kitchen to get my keys, I saw the senior’s lunch bag still on the counter.
He didn’t need it. He and his friends had plans — for Chipotle, for Raising Cane’s, for god-knows-what. In a way, I knew before I made that sandwich that he wouldn’t need it. But I still needed to make it.
Rather than making me sad, though, the sight of that lunch bag on the counter made me OK. He’s ready, I thought, to figure out his own meals. He’s ready to launch.
I don’t need to be needed. In fact, most days I don’t want to be needed by anyone else, because managing the needs of others is completely exhausting. I’m over it.
This son and his group had the blessing of a friend’s house right across from their high school. They have gathered there maybe every day at lunch to play basketball, eat, bond, do all the high school things teenagers do.
On the way to get my hair cut this morning before graduation, that friend’s mom sent an invitation to her house for a graduation party she called “The Last Lunch.”
The title of the invitation set off my tears more than the paper bag on the counter. Graduation is such a mixed bag of emotions. I’m so proud of him, but I’m going to miss him so much. I want him to soar but I know all the road bumps he can and will hit. I want him to live at home but his late-night hours are driving me crazy.
I walked into the salon with a blotchy, tear-streaked face and into the arms of my hairdresser, the same one that had to cut my toddler son’s hair on the porch of her salon because he cried so loudly in fear of a haircut.
An 80-year-old mom told me this week of her own children leaving home decades ago. A younger mom overheard my salon conversation and said she wanted to cry thinking of her own babies getting old enough to need braces. Another mom I don’t know said she had a hard day recently watching her son play his last baseball game and graduate on the same day.
It is the collective cry of motherhood that brings these children into the world, and it’s a different collective cry that launches them out into it.
Another trigger for me this week has been Brandi Carlisle’s song, “You Without Me.” In it she sings that “time makes every one of us an absolute cliche,” and I know that’s what I am today, crying in the salon chair about sandwich number 2,236 — the one that wasn’t needed. But what an honor and privilege it has been to make them — all 2,236 of them.
The advice and opinions herein are by no means meant to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Please contact your personal physician, mental health provider or health care professional for medical advice. Opinions are my own.