Marion Winik - The Lunch-Box Chronicles: Notes from the Parenting Underground

I N SCHOOL PORTRAITS tacked over my desk, you can see them at seven and five: Captain America and his little brother, the Refugee. Hayes makes a smirky Captain in his blue Cub Scout uniform and shiny helmet of hair, arms folded statesmanlike on the desk before him. Poor Vincent could qualify for social services on the basis of this photograph alone, I fear, eyelids half-mast, face covered with boo-boos, one ear blending with some books on a shelf in the background so that it looks outsized and deformed, like a leaf of radicchio.

How is it that these school mug shots can turn the most photogenic little angel into a sickly goon who seems to be smiling despite the matchsticks wedged under his fingernails? And the prices! Ill take the Bargain Bonanza Package for forty-five bucks, please. Couldnt pass up those two dozen bonus wallets.

Dear Mom, says an old Mothers Day letter posted beside the photos, written in shaky, fresh-minted cursive handwriting on blue-lined paper. I really like when you take me to the movies. You are special because you cook what I like. I want to help you clean the house. I really like how you smile. I have a surprise for you. Love, Hayes.

He wanted to help me clean the house? That was surprise enough. Another missive is penciled on a bunny cut out from yellow construction paper: Dear Mom. I love you Mom. Happy Spring Break Mom. When can Will come over.

Vincie, who doesnt write letters yet, is represented by artwork: a penciled depiction of a Martian and his pet shark, living in a castle full of fax machines and Nintendo controllers; another sheet printed all over with a rubber stamp of Vincent Winiks return address, some wobbly pink hearts, two figures with big smiles and bifurcated flippers for arms, and one word: MOM.

Some dayslike maybe three out of a hundredI am just so busy riding a tsunami of productivity in this home office of mine, I wish I didnt have to drop everything at 2:40 in the afternoon to go pick up my little pals at school. Far more likely, I start checking the clock at eleven, if not before, and count the minutes until its time to go. Not only because it means I get to escape the solitude of the so-called creative process for a few hours and resume my role as household drudge, math tutor, and nuthouse warden, but because I cant wait to see them, to repossess them, to get them back on my territory, whole, healthy and breathingin part, the same impulse that used to drive me to check their baby cribs midnap. Of course, this feeling of anticipation involves a bit of willful tiptoeing around the possibility of the Awful Afternoon with the Devil Brats from Hell, but hey, why not be optimistic.

I fly out the door and into the Jeep and have to force myself to slow down to twenty miles per hour as I reach the speed bumps and blinking lights of SCHOOL ZONE . I pull into the circular drive of the brick elementary school behind the minivans and Volvos and pickup trucks, and my personal favorite, the flower-power-printed Volkswagen Beetle that belongs to a local family doctor, reportedly equipped with a car phone but no air conditioning.

On the bench under a live oak tree, a mom with a Keith Haring button and black leggings is chatting amiably with a dad in a three-piece suit. Baby brothers and sisters mill around as their mothers stand in clusters, deconstructing last nights PTA meeting with the earnestness of Harvard graduate students, and representatives from various after-school programs stand ready with clipboards to gather up their broods. I spy the fund-raising coordinator and wander over to find out when Im scheduled to sell grocery certificates but am waylaid en route by the soccer coach and the plant sale chairwoman. BRYKER WOODS ELEMENTARY , says my mental bumper sticker for this place. WHERE PARENT INVOLVEMENT IS A SICKNESS .

The hair-raisingly loud buzzer euphemistically known as the bell goes off, the blue-green doors fly open, and the kids start tumbling out: the kindergarteners with their toy-store backpacks and Velcroed sneakers, who already look so tiny to me; the unimaginably grown-up sixth graders, with skateboards and cellos and streaks of orange dyed into their hair; and all the many kids from grades between who wear the same haircut as my kids do, so that almost daily, at least for a fraction of a second, I mistake someone else for mine.

And Im still searching the crowd when one of them skids up in front of me: my first grader Vince, his six-and-a-half-year-old body coltlike, skinny and knobby under the baggy, faded, torn-up, mismatched clothes he would rather die than throw away. Though he seems to get taller almost daily and can prepare a can of chicken noodle soup from start to finish without assistance, his face still wears the heart-tuggingly pure expression of one who has not completed the transition from baby to boy: something in his round blue eyes and jutting pink lower lip is as radiantly unformed, as clear and open, as it was when he was an infant waking up in his bassinet. He refuses to tie his shoes or get out of bed in the mornings, he has a wide lazy streak, a thirst for sibling combat, a madmans scream, and a whine that could probably serve as a form of torture in a pinch, but you can still see the otherworldly sweetness that he came with from the factory, which had his father and me insisting half-seriously to our acquaintances that we had given birth to the Baby Messiah.