Apology

Lunch, poor Lunch, how I've neglected you. I've let you down, let you faU by the wayside. Childhood was a good time for us. Mother saw to it. She made perfect little sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off, then cut them into squares. They were beautiful and delicate, too fine for bologna and mayonnaise, for peanut butter and jeUy. With some special friend I shared them, and plastic cups ofmilk.We sat there, across from each other, at a toy table for children, big bright flowers painted across its top, flimsy chairs with hard white seats. We sat without grownups, on the grass in the shade. We talked and sipped and chewed our sandwiches.We were not savages like other children. Then in grade school the grace drained away. Lunch, my friend, you were sealed up, crusts and all, in plastic wrapping where you could no longer breathe. Then you sweltered and jostled in a cramped tin box, and lost your beautiful frailty drooped and smeared. Milk was poured from smeUy paper cartons. Children traded food, betraying their mothers. But there was still the old fidelity ... to our ritual, that is . . . even later, when wrinkled brown paper, worse for its vulnerability, replaced clumsy tin, now considered juvenile. Sometimes, rather than bring you with us, we could bring ourselves to you instead.You came steaming hot in a bright foil platter, smaU compartments for vegetables and dessert, and a bigger place in the center for the star ofthe meal. This might be uncharismatic hamburger, or three (why three? I wondered) breaded fish-sticks, or something wet and dark they called SaUsbury Steak. On a good day it was pizza, even when the pizza was not much good itself. Quality could no longer be counted on. StiU there was the old time set aside, the insistence on feUowship, the escape from authority. Lunch— though your appearance shifted, I believe you were the same inside. 82 Pappi Tomas83 But I changed.When I left Mother behind, I left part ofyou with her. Yes, there were more cafeterias, now at this, now at that university; and there were jobs with regular lunch hours. But there were other jobs, too, with rushed, sporadic lunches, or no lunches at all. One summer in Europe, I was thriUed to find how people made time for you; they met you at home, where you could be at your best; they even turned their backs on commerce for you, and took time for a nap. But here in America, people see you as a cumbrance; they do their banking with you present; they go to the gym, and come to you out ofbreath. And I have often been like them. Some days, though, with classes out and no work until evening, a beautiful woman and I gathered in your honor, spread a blanket on the green grass (like that famous painting, except there was no river behind us, and my beautiful woman, though of a similar ironic expression, was quite clothed), and sat under a tree as my friend and I used to do. There were thick sandwiches wrapped in paper, generous with cheese and mustard and cool ripe tomatoes. The bread had crust we could tear with our teeth. We drank canned fruit sodas.We read, and watched passersby and slept for a while, and then walked home. Or we spread the same blanket on the living room floor, and enjoyed you at home the way I believe you prefer it, and then enjoyed each other, pushing aside our licked empty plates. And I recaU those lovely lunches alone, again at the park under a tree, or on a bench near the Farmers' Market awning, or on a cement border by the post office, bees buzzing past. I ate cream cheese on a bagel, and drank a cup of coffee; or fed on dark olives, feta and bread, a warm bottle of ale. I was so content on those occasions; I know this because I never stopped to think about it, and because I can remember those days so clearly now. But do you see how unreliable my attentions have become, how occasional and out of...