Lunch Poems

If Frank O'Hara had kids

My daughters eat the same thing for lunch every day. I have a problem with what the younger one eats; my older one has a problem with what she eats (but eats it anyway). Let’s dig in!

Margot, my 7-year-old, loves an egg salad sandwich. With the exception of Fridays (pizza), she has eaten one almost every school day since she started second grade. Of this I admit I am proud, maybe even smug, and I do partially credit myself. (For the first half of my pregnancy with her, this was the only protein source I could stomach.)

She knows her sandwich smells. But until recently she’s remained confident in her lunch choice, because, as she so eloquently explained to me, she really likes egg salad.

Lately, one of her friends has started regularly expressing her feelings about the aroma, and Margot has grown self-conscious. (It’s a smell that can really alter your reality. I feel for her friend, for everyone sitting around her, and I feel for her.) So we’re exploring new lunch options, playing a game of roulette.

My 4-year-old, Simone, eats a MadeGood birthday cake granola bar and a string cheese every day. Yes, I throw other things in there, fruit, carrots, seaweed, but the packaged crap is the meat of it. I hate this lunch! Believe me I’ve tried other things! But she is a double Scorpio! And she does what she wants!

While writing this I opened Instagram for the first time in a month and was blasted with the news that the orange yolks in Vital Farms eggs are absolute B.S., and all deli meat is carcinogenic. I’d like to just put my head in the dirt like an ostrich and eat worms.

What do your kids eat for lunch?