School Lunch

I don't remember what I had packed in my lunch pre-moving to Buffalo Grove. It doesn't stand out in any way to me. But I distinctly remember the importance of the contents of lunch when I entered fourth grade at Longfellow Elementary.

My new friend Marisa had great lunches. White bread with yellow cheese. Maybe there was turkey in there. An apple. And my dream - a baggie of Doritos.

My lunch consisted of Polish rye bread. Either the long narrow kind chocked full of seeds or the really dark almost black kind that crumbled when attempted to be eaten in a sandwich format. The bread was heavily buttered. Inside was cut up, hard, Polish kielbasa with a strong, spicy smell. The small unruly pieces loved to tumble out of the bread. I also had an orange, a baggy of radishes and a juice box.

I learned very quickly how to survive at Longfellow with that kind of lunch.
Rule #1 - all of the contents remained in the brown bag at all times until I was ready to deal with them one by one.
Rule #2 If I wasn't totally starving, I could eat the orange, drink the juice box and pop a few radishes in while no one was looking.
Rule #3 If I WAS totally starving, I allowed myself to eat a few bites of the sandwich but only if I kept most of it in the baggie and most of the baggie in the brown bag. To the untrained eye, I was eating some sort of a sandwich but by the time it got to too many questions I would shove it all back in the bag and head for the trash.

I'll never forget when some girl lost her retainer and had to dive for it in the trash. I remember her coming up and saying, "EW it smells like sausage in there." I threw my entire lunch away site unseen that whole week.

These days I'm totally weirded out that people love grainy, dark, long breads and that white bread is a thing of the past. Recently Linda, a co-worker, fought me for the last remaining pumpernickel bagel in the staff kitchen.

Henna Lady

Last week, my mom and I went to get our eye brows waxed and eye lashes henna-ed. According to my mom, the henna part is pretty common in Europe. I have yet to verify any reports that this is actually done anywhere in the states other than in the Polish neighborhood on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago or in a Polish woman's basement -which is where my mom and I have been going for the last ten years.

We have actually been going to the Henna Lady for a total of fourteen years. For the first four, we made the 50 minute trek from Buffalo Grove to the Milwaukee Avenue Polish neighborhood. We soon started to see her exclusively as she was the most precise and her dye seemed to last at least a month or so. Our routine each time is almost exactly the same as it has been for the last ten years as my mom sets up the appointment and notifies me of the time. We each travel separately and the first one to exit the highway at Schiller Park usually calls the other. We wait for each other to walk in.

Inside, the Henna Lady escorts us to her basement. We usually exchange a wave to her husband on the couch before descending down to the exercise room/beauty parlor. We make small talk about family and the holidays but never ever talk about the fact that we are Jewish. The Henna Lady used to make subtle and not so subtle antisemitic comments and jokes but those have stopped for the most part. We're pretty sure she figured it out about 5-7 years ago.

I never have cash on me when we are the Henna Lady's and therefore my mom always pays the $22 she charges us for henna-ing both sets of eyelashes and the eyebrow wax. Last week, however, I somehow had a folded up 20 and a 5 in my wallet. For the first time I told my mom it was on me.