The Reciprocal Tradition 10/15/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

I was preparing my daughter’s lunch to take to school a few days ago. I put all the non-refrigerated bits in the night before. The final addition is always the napkin. True, adding it could likely be a tad ridiculous since I am pretty sure she almost never uses it. I don’t just put a napkin in though. I do something that I have done every day since my daughter began school. If she takes a lunch, which is most days because to call her a picky eater would be a vast understatement, then I do this. I haven’t missed a lunch yet, amazingly enough. I write a note on her napkin every day. It is very rarely only a note. Often there is also a drawing that ties in with said note.  But as I was doodling a character from Super Mario Bros. on that paper square, I was remembering. This is a tradition handed down.

For as long as I can remember, my mom always wrote notes on my napkins when she would pack me a lunch.  Hers usually didn’t include any artwork, but they were heartfelt and in depth. If I remember correctly, which is challenging for me in any context much less that many decades ago, she used to include prayers and hopes for me. She does that whenever she writes me anything really. If I ever get a card for an occasion from her, I just have to go ahead to prepare to need tissue because the tears, they will flow.  Now, I cannot say that I have produced anything life altering for my daughter’s napkins. I started with simple phrases in kindergarten. There were more pictures then.  Now that she is reading far beyond her age, I can make the notes more involved. I admit it is a bit tedious after a busy evening when I know I still have to muster some creative juices to be able to put something of significance on a napkin but, I insist on doing it.  Yes, there are days that the content is relegated to a happy smiley face rather than well known characters or detailed creatures. I suppose such is the nature of life.  Some days you get a poofy coifed poodle with a diamond collar and some days you get a circle with dots.

My daughter seems to have returned the favor of this passed down tradition.  I am doing what my mom did and in return, she is doing what I did. You see, every evening when I wrestle her Frozen II lunchbox (one of 3 because you need backups in case they don’t come home as they should) I open it up to find, almost always, two things. There is the applesauce that she very rarely eats but that I continually include because there is the off chance that she will actually partake in some semblance of a healthy food choice once in a blue moon. And then there, often disheveled and almost never used, is my napkin. And the thing is, all her other “trash” from her lunch is gone but every day the napkin comes back.  I did ask her about it in the beginning of her school career and I don’t remember her exact words but basically, she didn’t want to get rid of the special something that I had made her.  She had actually wanted us to keep all of them. I explained to her why we couldn’t in fact store every napkin that I sent her and while she understood she did seem legitimately saddened when I actually threw it away.

The thing is, I felt the same way about the napkins my mom sent me. If I am not mistaken, which again, we’re requiring memory here so, who knows, I think there may have been a few occasions when I cried in my youngest years of school because one of my mom’s napkins got thrown away.  I didn’t bring them home like my daughter does, but they were amazingly important to me because even then, I knew how much special effort it took for her to do it. If it was thrown away before I felt it was appropriate, then I would be traumatized. I think I felt similarly about my lunch as well because it was specially made for me and if I ran out of time to eat it (we were given plenty of time I am just, much like my daughter, very easily distracted) and had to throw any away any of my lunch I was ridiculously upset.  She apparently feels very similarly about her special little napkins.  I find it fascinating that I am doing what my mother did and she is responding exactly how I did to it.

No, this isn’t the only thing that we have shared unintentionally. As I mentioned before, we are both terribly easily distracted. I chalk that up to our imaginations being so overactive that we have a veritable movie going on in our heads all the time so it’s easy to get taken away from what’s going on around us. She loves to read just like her mother.  She has heinously terrible handwriting, just like her mother. We both are not fans of math AT ALL. I hate that bit considering I understand you can’t really get away from it. Like me she can do it, but she doesn’t like to, and since she doesn’t like to, she doesn’t really put in all the effort she should.  Oh, I really wish I hadn’t given her that.  But I have to admit, pondering and sketching on a paper square, no matter how silly and probably pointless it is, it gives me a feeling I can’t really explain.  It warms my heart to remember my own sentimental lunch notes.  And then it only grows warmer when I open that lunch box and see that it was important enough to remain.  It seems to be a cycle and thankfully unlike some of the others I’ve mentioned, it is certainly not a vicious one.  It is a rolling wheel of cause and effect that boomerangs meaning from giver to receiver and back again.  Maybe one day she’ll spend a late night or the pre-dawn hours getting a unicorn to fit just so in the square. And Lord willing, that unicorn will return home, worse for wear but, serving as a pack horse for all the love with which he was created.