Panicked, I phoned my daughter’s kindergarten teacher from my desk:
“Quickly, Ms. Kim!” – I ordered.
“Put up Helen’s lunch. I packed wine-infused cheese and a knife.”
Later Helen reported that Ms. Kim let her eat the cold pot-roast meat and mushy banana, but complained that her teacher confiscated the oatmeal cookies mistaking the raisins for chocolate chips. Chocolate was banned in Ms. Kim’s Montessori classroom. She had embarrassed the children by taking away their Valentine’s Day gifts of chocolate.
That noontime when I opened my lunchbox and saw a bruised peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a single-serving bag of orange Goldfishä crackers, a tapioca pudding cup, and a juice box, I felt panic then guilt. This incriminating, photograph-like vision flooded my mind: the Trader Joe’s wedge of spreadable, white cheese, with purple ribbons of wine, in its royal purple wrapper, with a drawing of a happy, drunken goat on the label; a cheese knife from home with a hefty, wooden hilt painted in yellow and embellished with carvings of vines suggesting autumn grapes ready for the wine crush; and the double-pointed, hook-shaped tip at the blade’s end to impale soft chunks of cheese.
I had packed the drunken goat cheese and the knife in my lunchbox to surprise my colleagues on the executive committee at our four o’clock meeting. A professor at a teaching institution, I performed many service roles that were recognized but unpaid. I had received tenure and promotion the year before; I was now serving as the secretary to the academic senate. As officers, we would gather once monthly to fix the senate agenda. To save the university’s money, we would bring wine, cheese and crackers to share. That morning was a harried affair. After waking Helen, feeding the cats, myself, and my daughter, I packed the lunches. Then I drove Helen to school forty-five minutes away from my own campus. During these ninety-minutes in the car, I did not once recall the task of making our lunches. Instead, I was mentally planning class lessons and writing meeting agendas.
Lunch time in the Montessori Kindergarten was a daily ritual to foster practical life skills and responsibilities in the children, and to provide them with opportunities for developing their fine motor skills. At noon, a brass bell would ring in the untraditionally arranged classroom – the desks were not in rows. The children, who could be at any desk in the classroom because they would choose their own work focus each morning, would put away their learning materials. Then the kindergarteners would carefully set their individual lunch table at whichever desk they found themselves. After placemats, cloth napkins, flatware, a glass filled with water from a ceramic pitcher, and the lunchbox were laid on the desk in this precise order, they could begin eating. Nonetheless, the reality was chaos as children jockeyed to change desks to sit with each other. Imagine spoons, pencils, napkins and juice-box straws flying as the kids would run to choose the best spot and to set their place first.
When I opened my lunch that day, saw Helen’s lunch, and knew what had happened, the claw-shaped tip of the cheese knife struck terror in my heart. Undisclosed, what harm could the knife do in the hands of the kindergarteners jockeying to secure a lunch spot next to their friends? Would the knife’s unique tip and hilt provoke a kid to engage in make-belief and mischief? In my mind’s eye, I saw Louis, Helen’s unpredictable peer and the tallest boy in the group. Would Louis, with honor and resolve, like a knight defending the citadel, use the now-sword to defend his lunch territory from marauding invaders?
And there was my own sense of honor to consider. I knew the drunken goat cheese alone would tarnish my reputation as a mom, but not disclosing the knife would end my reputation at that school. I hurried to make the phone call.
