Rainy Days and Lunchboxes



I had this lunch-box



Rainy days were the best kind of days when I was a little girl,at least in my first few years of elementary school! For one thing it meant we’d be inside during recess; we’d play fun games like “Heads-Up, Seven-Up,” and “Whose Missing.” We’d even get to eat our lunch in our classroom! Now, if the first few years of elementary school taught me anything, it was how to fully appreciate the delight of lunchtime. There was no other time like it. It was as though the children began to think about their lunches from the time they arrived at school just as soon as the first bell rang; what was in their lunchboxes, who would be buying their lunch that day or "bringing" their lunch, etc., not forgetting the fierce competition of who had the best lunchbox – Bozo the Clown, The Jetsons, The Beatles, Mickey Mouse Club, Mary Poppins, Barbie, Paldin, and of course - for Papa - the lunch box of lunchboxes, The Satellite Lunch-box! To him, it embodied the vision of all his boyish hopes and dreams for the not to distant future in space, which was typical of many young boys of the 50's and 60's. And each one of these nutrient bearing metal cases had a little matching thermos inside to carry cold milk or hot soup to drink along with your sandwich, piece of fruit and cookie. The lunch-hour was a time of anticipation and bustle; once you were old enough to really appreciate it anyway. In my relatively short life, up to that point, lunch was just lunch, nothing more. You ate it and went on with your day as quickly as possible, hopefully avoiding the dreaded "rest" that sometimes followed. But school lunch-time was a period you could have to yourself or with a favorite friend at "your table"; a time to think, to ponder, and to pretty much either shovel food into your mouth so you could get to recess as quickly as possible, like some did; or to maybe take a little extra time and simply put the food into your mouth, bite by bite, the way your mother taught you as though she were lovingly looking over your shoulder, and get to recess a little after the others.

For me, it gave me time to reflect on just how much I liked my school life. Lunchtime was halfway through the schoolday, but I still remember the feeling of those extraordinary rainy days and I can recall being captivated by the drops on the windows and gazing out feeling the safety and protection of being inside our sturdy¸ sheltered classroom when we had those special "indoor" lunch days.



Papa's very favorite lunch-box, The Satellite Lunch-box, because his
dad worked in the space program and he always wanted to go there!



Today is a day like that here in Naples! It’s raining outside – not too hard though, just enough to stay in the sturdy, sheltered indoors for recess and eat our lunch inside our cozy Naples house. Papa and I had some plans to play outside today. We were headed to Procida, one of the smaller islands nearby, but instead the rain got in the way . . . fair-weather travelers, that's what we are! In its place, we are doing more boring things like studying and catching up on housework! Not as exciting or fun at all, but necessary nevertheless.