A Smile, A Promise Kept, And Our Last Lunch Ever In Elementary School

It’s 1:05 p.m.

I’m sitting where I’m supposed to sit when parents come for lunch, and there’s this really great moment that I’m waiting for. It happens when the kids first walk in and make their way along the back of the cafeteria — it’s a cafegymatorium, actually — before turning to follow the wall that will lead them to where the food is served. The moment will happen right when I see my kid. I know it will, because it’s happened every time I’m here.

“Here” is our elementary school. Our daughter, now a rising high school senior, started kindergarten here back in 2007 and finished fifth grade in 2013. Our middle child, our oldest boy, was here from 2010 to 2016. Our youngest child, who I’m waiting to see, started here in 2013. He’s in fifth grade now.

Our road through elementary school has been long. We’ve been here for twelve straight years, in fact, and it all comes to an end this week.

I suppose it’s natural in times such as these, when yet another of life’s major chapters closes and so many emotions are stirred within, to think about the road that’s been traveled. As I wait, surrounded by the loud, excited chatter of the elementary school lunch, that’s exactly what I do.

I think of how I used to visit so much more frequently and how I used to be so much more involved in my children’s time here. I was a regular at the teacher conferences, for example. In the fall of 2007, we had our very first one. I was nervous about this ground we’d never before plowed, and it didn’t help that, right at the beginning of the conference, our daughter’s kindergarten teacher said she’d been concerned at the start of the year that our daughter was too young. Because of her late-September birthday, our daughter was still just four-years-old when the school year started. But, the teacher assured us, our daughter was doing fine.

I think about the times I helped teach Junior Achievement business classes to the early grades. And how I always rocked the annual storytelling festival, where parents dressed up as fictional characters and read to various classes.

I even presented at career day, and I’m proud that I didn’t bore the class to tears. I like to think all of my experience in the courtroom made the difference, that I can be captivating and informative, but I know it was most likely the toy eighteen-wheeler that I brought instead. A gift from a grateful client, it made really cool engine and air brake noises.

And I think of how I used to know my child’s classmates so well that I could tell immediately, from the sight of the first child entering the lunchroom, whether it was my child’s class that was coming.

But all that was a while ago. I’ve missed teacher conferences in the intervening years. I’ve not been here for lunch nearly as often as I should. I worry that in these years I’ve not been able to give any of my children the attention they need and deserve. I worry about the fallout from when life became too busy, when plans were canceled, and promises were admittedly broken.

Don’t beat yourself up about that, I tell myself. You’re here now.

That’s when a little girl approaches. I have no idea who she is. She’s in what, third grade?

“You can’t sit here,” she says. “Another class will be sitting here.”

I protest, silently. But this is where parents sit when they come to have lunch with their kids.

An employee approaches, and she confirms what the girl just told me.

“I thought this is where the parents sit,” I tell her, but I notice something’s different about the room. Most of the tables used to run from left to right from one side of the room to the other, but they have literally been turned since the last time I was here. They now run left to right from the front of the room to the back.

“When did y’all move the tables?” I ask the woman. “They used to go this way.” I motion with my hands to show what I mean.

She eyes me like I’ve lost my mind. What I’ve said clearly does not compute.

“I’ve been here for two years,” she says, “and they’ve always been this way.”

Ouch.

I make a note to apologize to my son for not having had lunch with him any more recently than today.

And I take the fast-food lunch I’ve brought for us and the special treat I’ve brought for his class and move to where I’m supposed to be.

And I wait.

At 1:15, a class enters. I have to watch each child, because I don’t know if this is his class.

I see him. He’s about the tenth kid in.

But we don’t have the moment I’ve been waiting for. He follows his class along the walls, reaches the front of the cafeteria, and grabs a place mat. That’s when he turns to look for me.

That’s when he sees me. And there it is.

The moment I’ve been waiting for.

That smile.

Through twelve years here — through their whole lives, really — I’ve definitely made mistakes. I’ve broken promises. But I’ve never promised a lunch date and not been here. If it didn’t break their hearts, it would surely have broken mine. I would have missed these moments. These smiles.

Sure, the smiles could be born from genuine surprise. Like you made it, I wasn’t sure you would. But it could just be genuine happiness to see me and perhaps the start of a memory that they’ll carry with them forever.

It really doesn’t matter which, though, because there’s an element common in either case:

Daddy’s here, just like I said I would be.

And their smiles have always been great comfort for this busy man’s heart.

My son takes his place across from me at the table, and we eat. I apologize that it’s been so long since we’ve eaten here together. We hand doughnuts out to his class as a celebration of his eleventh birthday, which was actually several weeks ago (sorry again, son). He and I plan a sleepover that he’ll host weekend after next.

We don’t get too sappy about this being our last lunch here, the road through elementary school that’s coming to an end, or how I will miss this place.

But I do ask if he’s up for a selfie, and, though many kids his age might refuse such a request from their parents in such a public place, this wonderful child of mine indulges me. He takes a seat beside me, and I take the picture. I immediately look forward to being reminded of it in a year, or two years, or five years, through some social media reminder function or another.

Because I will indeed miss this place and moments like these.

We’re at the end of a twelve-year road here. Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate the fifth graders at a ceremony, and my son will be moving to middle school. Our school cafeteria lunches together, with near certainty, have reached their end. They apparently don’t do that in middle school, and certainly not in high school. In these years to come, all of our children will make more of their own ways into the world. They’ll become less and less dependent on us. In no time, they will be all grown up.

They’ll probably make their way back to our elementary school at some point, though. When they visit, they will surely marvel, like all grown children do, at how much smaller the school has become. The playground will no longer stretch on for what once seemed like miles. The hallways will be much more narrow. This cafeteria will be so incredibly tiny. It will all be a miniature version of what they remember, even though they will know nothing has changed.

They will have just outgrown it, like so many other things.

Like elementary school lunches with their dad.

I wouldn’t have missed this day for anything.

And if ever I come back, I’ll just look in this room and remember how I used to make them smile.