The Lunch

The Lunch

This story is a gentle peek into the wonderful, innocent world of children, has been written for adults.

I used to get up each morning quite early, and walk quietly past my daughter, Noa’s room so as not to wake her, although I knew there was a good chance she was already awake and waiting for me in the kitchen. If so, Noa would already be sitting on her chair and smiling at me, and our morning kitchen-ritual would commence.

Noa would ask me to prepare three different sandwiches. She wanted me also to put different fillings from what I had put into the sandwiches the previous day. Noa would tell me exactly what she would like me to put in them. And I would do as she asked.

I would enquire as to why this or that filling -- but I never got a straight answer. Nor could I get an answer to my other question: why she needed three sandwiches, because as far as I knew, she rarely finished one sandwich.

One day, I walked past Noa's schoolyard. She sat with her little girlfriend, next to one of the walls, and talked and ate at the same time. I noticed that the sandwich she ate wasn't the one I had prepared. I did not call out to her, just stood outside her schoolyard and enjoyed looking at them from afar.

That day, when Noa got home I told her that I saw her and her little friend that morning. I also mentioned that, as far as I could see, she wasn't eating one of the three sandwiches I had prepared. She didn't get embarrassed at all, but looked at me with her big beautiful blue eyes and told me: “Mom, believe me, I need three sandwiches each morning. One sandwich I give to Betty, who doesn't have any. The other one I trade for Mary's sandwich, because in that way we share. And the third one I give to Eden, because he always forgets the sandwich you prepare him, at home.”