Lunch

Lunch

“I don’t like this.”

I looked at my four-year-old granddaughter looking at the sandwich her mother packed for her lunch. I had her unexpectedly because a pipe broke at her school.

I looked at the sandwich, I wasn’t sure what it was. Her mother was a wonderful cook, but made much more complicated things than I do. This seemed to be some kind of a salad spread, but not tuna or egg, or anything I would recognize.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think it has ham in it... I’m not sure.”

“How do you know you don’t like it?” I asked, like an idiot.

“Because it smells like I don’t like it.”

Well, you can’t fight that explanation! “Oh," I said, taking a sniff. I honestly couldn’t identify it either, though it smelled pretty good to me.

“Well, what are we going to do? What do you do at school when you don’t like your lunch?”

“Sometimes I trade lunches with Susan. Susan likes more things than I do.”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought you weren’t allowed to share food at school anymore.” I knew I’d heard they do that because of allergy issues.

“We aren’t sharing, we’re trading,” she said with a four year old’s conviction that this made it completely different.

“Well,” I started, then realized I didn’t have to deal with this. I wasn’t her mother, or her teacher, and I knew she didn’t have any allergies. “Well,” I began again, “I have chunky peanut butter...”

“Yes!!!” she said, delightedly!

So we had a great lunch, her PB sandwich with strawberry jelly, and me some unknown substance that was absolutely delicious!

The day was fun. And, I got that sandwich filling recipe from her mother. I’m afraid I’ll never make it though, it requires actual cooking...