The Kids Who Came to My Potluck

Twenty Eight Years

I started the fall Brian was in third grade. That means I was in that kitchen longer than some of the teachers, longer than two principals, longer than the building had been painted the color it is now.

I wore a hairnet and an apron and shoes with no arch left in them. I was there at 6:10 every morning to turn on the ovens.

People think a lunch lady scoops. That is the smallest part of it.

You count. You count trays and cartons. You count how many kids get the free lunch and how many pay.

You count the ones who come through with no money and a look that says please do not make this a thing. You learn which ones that is.

You learn it the first week. You never unlearn it.

We fed about four hundred children a day at the elementary, kindergarten through sixth. In a town this size you feed the same families for a whole generation.

I fed men who are farmers now. I fed the woman who cuts my hair.

I fed two sheriff’s deputies and a John Deere mechanic. I fed a girl who went off and became a nurse in Wichita and came home to work at the clinic.

Then I fed her children too. That is a thing that happens if you stand in one kitchen long enough.

I knew their allergies before the cards caught up. I knew who could not have the peanut butter and who would not touch the green beans.

I knew who needed two milks because there was not much waiting at home. I kept crackers in my apron pocket for the ones who came in shaky, and I never once made them ask.

Lon used to tease me that I treated that cafeteria like a church. He was not wrong.

I believe you can love people with a ladle. A hot tray handed over without a word, without a lecture, without a look, is a kind of grace.

I handed out that grace for twenty-eight years. I counted it a good life, and I still do.

The pay was not much. I started at a little over minimum and I retired at not quite fourteen dollars an hour, summers off without pay, and insurance I was glad to have.

Nobody goes into a school kitchen for the money. You go in because it fits around a child of your own, and then you stay because you cannot picture those mornings without it.

I missed one line day in twenty-eight years. That was the morning they called about Brian and the truck in the ditch outside Hays.

The other cooks covered me and nobody said a word about it after. That is the kind of women they were. You do not forget who stood in for you.