I make school lunches every single morning.
With an 8th grader and a 4th grader, both boys have eaten the cafeteria lunch maybe a handful of times combined. It was never a rule we set. It just became… our thing. My thing.
Some mornings I’m up early enough to make homemade quiche. I’ll pull it from the oven while the house is still quiet, slice it carefully, tuck it into a container still warm. Other mornings, it’s a quick assembly — whatever makes sense, whatever’s in the fridge, done in ten minutes before the chaos of backpacks and shoes and “where’s my socks?”
And then there are the days I swing through Starbucks and grab a bacon gouda sandwich. Still counts. Still packed with the same intention.
Because here’s what I’ve realized after all these years: the lunch isn’t about the food.
It’s about the fact that when my boys sit down at the cafeteria table, they’re opening something I made for them. They might not think about it that way — honestly, they probably don’t. But I do. Every zip of that lunch box is me saying I thought about you this morning. I wanted you to have something good.
I know these days are numbered. Logan, my 8th grader, is closer to making his own lunch — or buying it, or skipping it entirely like teenagers do — than he is to the days when I’d arrange everything in fun, colorful containers just to make it feel a little special. The 4th grader, Q, still reports back at dinner with full details. Why he dips quesadillas in apple sauce. Why the crackers got soggy. Why I absolutely need to make that again. I live for that debrief.
There’s joy in the routine of it. There’s joy in the creativity — trying to pack something that won’t get left untouched. There’s joy in knowing that in a school day full of things I can’t control, I got to send them off with one small thing made just for them.
Every lunch, every single one, is made with love. Even the Starbucks ones.
Especially the Starbucks ones.
