The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: LUNCH (and a halfway point observation)

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above. 

This month's prompts include: hospital, hotel, humming, ice-skating, illness, kitchen table, knife, laundry, library, lunch.

LUNCH

you can buy this on ebay.
Visiting the site reminded me
of another memory:
I often brought for school
lunch a thermos of
chicken noodle soup.

For a time, just after my parents' (first) divorce, we qualified for the free lunch program. Was this a big deal to wee me? I don't know. I do remember some self-consciousness about it, because the free lunch kids got in a different line than the regular lunch kids. But then, I was self-conscious about many things. I didn't see myself as “poor.” I just hoped the lunchroom would be serving something I wouldn't mind eating. For the vast majority of my school years, I brought my lunch to school – mostly in a plain brown paper bag. But I do recall a Little House on the Prairie lunchbox at one point. What was almost always inside? a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

In high school I have some traumatic lunch memories – one in which all the kids at the table where I usually sat were away for the day (a field trip, maybe?), and I didn't want to sit all alone, so I decided to join some kid who rode the same bus as me. It did NOT go well, and was instead one of those heartbreaking times when taking the risk kind of backfired. But I survived, and I learned something: Not only is it okay to sit alone, sometimes it's better.

I'm at the halfway mark now with this memoir project, and it's is teaching me that there are some things I've experienced that I am not willing to really recall in any great detail. I am fine leaving the fuzzy lens on for many things – which means maybe memoir writing is not for me. Or maybe I'm just not ready. I want – need – to focus on the positive. This doesn't mean I am denying the negative things happened, just that for now, and maybe forever, I choose not to dwell in that space.