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In the quiet, predawn hours of every weekday, the kitchen light in our small apartment becomes a solitary beacon of ritual. My name is Meredith, and for me, packing my son’s lunch is not merely a domestic chore; it is an act of defiance against a world that feels increasingly expensive and indifferent. I have mastered the art of the clearance bin—salvaging bruised apples, hunting for the granola bars with the “best by” dates that are dangerously close, and making a single loaf of bread perform a week’s worth of miracles. In our home, a packed lunch is a sacred promise that, no matter how precarious our finances become, my ten-year-old son, Andrew, will always have something nourishing in his hands.
Andrew is a quiet boy, possessing a level of perceptiveness that often breaks my heart. Usually, ten-year-old boys are blissfully unaware of the rising cost of utilities or the anxiety that comes with a dwindling checking account, but Andrew has always known more than I would like. He never asks for seconds, he never complains about the repetition of peanut butter and jelly, and lately, he has been returning home with a lunchbox so clean it looks like it was never used. I used to joke about his healthy appetite, but recently, the requests grew specific and strangely urgent.
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