Lunch.

My mom used to pack us the most amazing lunches. So good, my fellow high schoolers would meet me at the bottom of campus in the morning to see what they might get a bite of. "Did she make that egg salad again?" Everything in my bag (paper) would be portioned out perfectly and there was always a napkin folded neatly and placed along the side. I loved these lunches and it wasn't until I was a parent and trying to follow suit that I understood what it took to face tuna before breakfast and the energy it must have taken for her to make her three kids lunches for all the years and years and years that she did (not to mention breakfast and dinner).

Last summer I went to a memorial service for my high school basketball coach, Sylvia Holly, and one of my teammates told me she still thinks about those lunches. How, "she even made the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches seem special." It was my mom's way of taking care of us, doing her job (as she saw it) and she was really good at it. And now, there's a gaggle of us walking around, 35+ years later thinking of her killer tuna or the turkey on wheat while rummaging through the fridge to make sure there is some food to grab after the morning meeting.

At my work people always want to know what I'm eating; they want a bite or a sniff or the recipe that I never cook from. I didn't plan this, to be like my mother this way, but I am ever grateful to be so. That I have a relationship with tastes and smells, that I love the process of cooking, it's all my mom. She'd take us to do the weekly grocery shopping and I loved it. I'd wait back a little when she approached the meat counter and see her pick out something to ask the butcher about. She had friendly relations with these guys, she'd inquire about their kids, would ask about the best way to cook a certain cut of beef, and I could see how this mattered...to them, to her, to us.

My relationship to food is not just eating. It's about the color of the plump tomatoes I'll cut up for a snack and the thought I'll put into dinner. It's about the lovely tea I am drinking this morning and the time I'll spend at the (tiny) farmers market in my town. It's even about the nuts in my "food drawer" that my co-workers raid when the urge hits them (my mom loves mixed nuts). It's about pleasure, creativity, connection....and, the perfect egg salad.