Duckie Mugs and Field Trip Lunches

by thereisnosurvivorsguide

After a conversation with my kiddo about how it’s much different to choose to be weird vs. your parent sending something weird to school, I was a little worried that he’d find the duckie mug that I’d sent for his Journalism Solstice Party embarrassing….

Turns out he loved the duckie mug! On the other hand, he might have been a little embarrassed when his teacher, weeping at the front of the room, announced that Lukas’ mom and another student’s dad had sent extra mugs and affirmations, in case they were needed.

I remember my own feeling of mortification when my mother sent me to school on field trip days with a lunch for myself and a couple extra, in case they were needed. And I’m not talking brown sack lunches, I’m talking folded over grocery bags filled with all the Little Debbie Snacks food stamps could buy. Even while mid-year I was still borrowing school supplies, that food stamps couldn’t buy, from my neighbors, after my mother had angrily turned down my teacher’s offer to buy me glue and scissors and markers. (And if I were to take us off course, this would be a perfect glimpse into the difference between charity and mutual aid, but that’s not today’s story). I still remember holding these giant bags up with my teeny hands and apologizing with my eyes for my mother’s eccentric behavior while I whispered: “My mom said these are for kids who don’t have lunch.”

The teacher who I handed the giant lunches too didn’t weep. She seemed annoyed and made eyes with another chaperone about the whole thing. But later, sitting at a rotting picnic table, I watched another kid devour one of the lunches my mother sent. Completely unaware of where it came from. And I felt so proud of my mom for knowing better than my teacher in that moment. In this moment, curled up next to an artificial fire with mild pain in my aging knees, I’m realizing that my mother was just 2 or so years older than my child who I sent these mugs with is now.

I’ve been building a list of all the positive things that I’ve received from the people who helped to raise me. Who were more often than not also people who provided me with endless list of things to heal from. And this memory keeps resurfacing as one of the most precious gifts. I wonder often whether it was the abundance, and not generosity nor acknowledging need, which embarrassed me. This thing I still struggle with now: to have enough without shame.

No one needed the extra mugs I sent last week. But the teacher, instead of shuffling around need like whispered secrets, openly weeped in front of the class, reminding them each that they’d always be cared for.

As it turns out, my kiddo wasn’t embarrassed about it at all. ❄️♥️❄️