Forum: The importance and love of packing a good lunch

Published 1:30 am Saturday, May 9, 2026

Give me dishes to wash, laundry to fold, or garbage to take out.

For years, I’d rather do almost anything than make school lunches.

If it was my turn, I’d scrounge in my kids’ backpacks for their nylon lunch boxes and find discarded wrappers, tin foil or orange peels; uneaten baggies of baby carrots or popcorn; or in CeCe’s case, her bagel-with-cream-cheese or chicken nuggets, untouched. Ravenous in the evenings, the kid rarely had an appetite during the day, and yet we packed her a full meal just in case.

My three kids are the Goldilocks of school lunch: there was not enough or too much, or Dad, didn’t you remember I don’t like Veggie Sticks or red grapes or that bread with seeds? Too often, the grapes, sliced strawberries or turkey-with-mayo sandwich I’d packed took a nice little trip to school and back, before being thrown away.

My middle child, Sam, plays the role of food critic. Before he leaves for the bus, he’ll look in his lunch sack, evaluate its shortcomings, and switch out fruit leather for a mandarin orange cup, or the French Onion Sun Chips with the Garden Salsa flavor.

I was trying to show my love for my kids, and failing often. My big brother knows something about this.

He’d signed up to chaperone his middle daughter’s 8th grade field trip last week, to UW’s “Engineering Days.” The night before, due to untold indiscretions, my niece lost her phone privileges for two weeks. Which is how my brother found himself on the UW campus, supervising a group of boys, his own daughter barely speaking to him.

He was sending a message of love. She had her own message to send, delivered in chilly, one-word answers.

My brother knows, as I do, that math is not on our side.

There are only so many field trips left to chaperone, games or performances to attend, car rides to Big 5 or Fred Meyer at 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday because a kid realized they need a mouthguard or kneepads or a tri-fold board for biology.

When they’re born, we do a thousand acts of love and sacrifice for our babies. And one day it becomes a hundred acts. Soon, those opportunities become fewer and fewer.

The math tells me I could make 29 more lunches for Cole, 752 for Sam, and 1,292 for CeCe. So I’ve changed my mind about making lunches.

This is something I can do.

Which brings me to this morning, when Sam was getting ready for Saturday marching band practice.

His music teacher schedules a few extra Saturday practices before parade season, which works for most of her band kids, except for those who rely on the school for lunch.

One of these, a friend of Sam’s – let’s call him Caleb – lives in an apartment in South Everett, with a loving Mom, trying to hold things together, raising three boys and expecting a baby this fall.

We’d asked Sam to pack his own lunch for band practice, and he pulled out two of our black nylon lunch boxes and filled them each with two slices of last night’s pizza, apples, popcorn, and chocolate-chip protein bars. One for him, one for Caleb.

My biggest lunch critic, showing his love for his friend.

Showing me, as he has many times before, the importance of packing a good lunch.

Cory Armstrong-Hoss lives in Everett with his wife and three kids. He’s a nonprofit guy, a community volunteer, and a mediocre maker of sack lunches. Find him at substack.com/@atahossforwords