By Sherry Poff

I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely.
~Renita Weems

I sat in the dimly lit lunchroom next to Becky Bailey. Neither of us spoke as the chicken gravy and peas on the tray before us cooled and glazed over. We could hear our first-grade classmates out on the playground. Their laughter and shouts drifted in through the open door of our elementary school and down the stairs to where we sat at our table in the basement. We could go outside, we were told, when we had eaten some lunch.

I had never been forced to eat anything. When it came to meals, my mother operated on a rule handed down from her father: If you have to make children eat, it doesn't do them any good. I had led a very happy existence at home for nearly six years before entering school, cheerily eating oatmeal and my mother's big puffy biscuits for breakfast, peanut butter crackers for snacks, and beans, potatoes and cornbread for supper.

In the summer, Mom let me have all the fresh lettuce I wanted and baked plenty of crunchy cornbread to eat with green onions and sliced tomatoes. She took me to the garden to pick corn and cucumbers and then let me help pick and break green beans, which I ate with enthusiasm. Whenever we got a watermelon, Daddy cut it in big, plate-size slices and sprinkled salt on top. I slurped it up. There were many foods I loved. Chicken gravy, however, was something I would not like to try, and canned peas smelled funny. Becky didn't like them either.

So there we sat day after day, Becky with her blond curls and me with my straight, dark hair, side-by-side, closed-mouthed and silent. We knew the routine. When the bell rang signaling the end of recess, we would be allowed to empty our plates and go to class, where Mrs. Williams would sigh over us in exasperation and turn to write on the board.

One fateful day, in complete frustration I suppose, Mrs. Williams stopped me on my way to the large gray trashcans where I would rake out my plate. Grabbing my fork, she scooped up some spaghetti and pointed it at my mouth. I was stubborn, but not usually disobedient. She had caught me off guard. Without thinking, I opened my mouth and in went the spaghetti, now cold and slimy from sitting on my plate for nearly an hour. In a very few seconds, the spaghetti came out again, and with it what was left of my biscuits and oatmeal. Mrs. Williams grabbed my plate. "Go to the bathroom," she barked.

The entire lunchroom staff was disappointed. I think they worried about Becky and me. We were both little girls from the mountain hollows. I lived on Skinfork, and she was from Turkey Creek. The good ladies in the kitchen seemed to feel that it was part of their job to get some nourishing food in us. They did not see our mothers preparing our breakfast in the pre-dawn darkness or know that they would have supper waiting for us when we got off the bus in the evening. No one at our school ever brought lunch from home. So we ate in the lunchroom — or sometimes didn't eat, much to the dismay of the adults. And now I had created a real mess. It made me sad when Mr. Webb, the custodian, a nice man I liked, was called to clean up after me. Although he whistled cheerily and gave me a big wink, I knew that the clean-up was not fun.

On the bus ride home I thought about it again: the slimy spaghetti hitting my tongue, the sudden warmth rising from my stomach, and Mrs. Williams' look of horror and disgust. It felt awful. After weeks of hiding in the cloakroom, I had finally learned to like school, and now it was going badly. I told the story to my mom at home, getting ready for bed. She didn't have a lot to say, just some questions as she poured hot water from a steaming kettle into the big round tub for my bath: "What happened then? Did you go to class? How do you feel now?"

In just a few days it was time for a meeting of the Parent-Teacher Association. My dad didn't like to attend these events, but I could count on Mom to be there. I was so proud of her. Mom was tall and slim, with black curly hair and a lovely smile. She was quiet and a little shy, and — I later realized — felt somewhat inadequate, but she had business to attend to at the PTA meeting, so she went.

At night the dreaded lunchroom was transformed into a meeting hall. A stage at one end provided a platform for programs and speakers. After hearing us sing "Smokey the Bear" and recite Joyce Kilmer's "Trees," parents were dismissed to classrooms where they met with our teachers. Mom and I looked around the room, oddly unfamiliar in the evening. We found my desk, and I showed off my colorful pictures and handwriting samples. Then it was Mom's turn to talk with Mrs. Williams. After only a minute or two, we were ready to go.

I rode the bus to school the next day, just like always. I wrote in my writing pad with my fat red pencil, went to the bathroom in a line to wash my hands before lunch, and picked up my tray from the counter by the kitchen just like always. But something had changed. When I sat down with my food, I ate the warm, yeasty roll that I enjoyed, stirred my mashed potatoes, and even sampled a few bites, but when the time came to leave, no one held me back. I was allowed to rake my uneaten potatoes and meat loaf into the trash can, run up the stairs and out into the sunshine with the rest of my class. My mother — my beautiful, quiet, smart mother — had been to school and had left clear instructions for everyone: "Do not try to make Sherry eat."

http://www.chickensoup.com