Please Let Me Have Lunch With My Child

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A few weeks ago, we packed our bags, sat in a car, drove to another city, got keys to an apartment and settled my daughter in her new room. The next day we drove back home. She did not return with us. This was the first time in her life that she would spend a night on her own. This was also the first time in my life that she would not be sleeping at home. And just like that. She was gone. 

Life goes through many different phases. At different times you have different lives. The phases change every few years. They have to come and go. You don’t have any control over it. You have to accept each new phase. The better you are at adapting to new phases, the happier you are. Nobody’s life is stuck in the same phase forever. Oftentimes the phases change either with the addition of a new person in your life or when somebody goes away. Every phase brings with it some joys and some issues of sadness. Some phases have more joy. Others have more sadness. But you have to find joy in the sad times and remember your sad times during times of joy. The phases sometimes are predictable but other times change without any warnings or premonitions. 

As I look back at my own life I can still remember all the phases. There was a time when we were kids. This was the house of my childhood, where I had consciousness as a child. There were three of us brothers and we used to live with our stay at home mom. At that age that was our whole world and as a child one could not even imagine that life will be different some day. We used to wake up in the morning and have breakfast as a family. Our dad was a young doctor with a lot of working hours. He would himself drop us off at school. We would often be about ten minutes late to school and had to run around the school grounds a couple of times as punishment. Our dad used to pick us up and we would have lunch together sometimes indoors but when the weather was good, at the patio garden. Our father would take a nap and then go to work in the evening. We would just play in the yard or do our homework. Sometimes we would play with our neighbors. If someone were to invite us to a birthday party, we often could not go because we had only one car that my father used to go to work. Also our mom didn’t drive. She used to cook and clean and yell at us for not keeping things clean and tidy. We would always have dinner when our dad would come home. Then we used to go to sleep often, all three of us in the same room with the air conditioner on in the hot Peshawar summers. 

The next phase I remember is when we were a bit older in the high school and college age. Our younger brothers were born who were about eight to ten years younger than us. We did not have a sister and it was just a lot of boys hanging out in the house doing boys stuff. Chasing each other, often fighting, laughing, watching movies and video games. Our dad was older in his fifties and was at a much senior level at his job. We now had a driver who would drive us back and forth to school. Our mom always allowed us to invite our friends over and oftentimes when friends of multiple brothers were over, the house would look like a dorm with boys of different ages roaming around. A lot of our friends still tell us how they remember the moments spent at our house and we give credit to our mom to be gracious enough to host all these boys. Later when we became parents ourselves we realized that it was not an easy thing to do to control so many boys. I would always be fooling around with my two younger brothers following me wherever I went. Their job was to laugh at my jokes and do everything that I say. I was their big brother after all. 

Then came the first time that I realized that you could also lose someone you love and that is how you can enter into the next phase of your life almost instantly. My older brother had finished his medical college studies and had passed his exams to go to the United Kingdom for his postgraduate medical studies. Over multiple dinner discussions, I knew that the overall plan was for him to go for a few years and then come back to take over our father’s busy pediatrics practice. It seemed like it would just be some training for a few years and then he would be back and our lives would return to the same as they were. But then just like that, we drove him to the airport, waved him goodbye and then he was gone. 

This was the first time it hit me that somebody that you love can go away from your life. Yes they are still there and you can pick up the phone and talk to them any time. Yes you can plan a trip and go meet them any time. Yes they will come to visit you and you will still get together for a lot of family gatherings. But you will no longer wake up in the morning and see their uncombed hair. You will no longer be fighting over who finished the ice cream. You will no longer be sitting with that person in the same room for hours and not even talk to each other. Since the day my brother left about thirty years ago, he started his own new life and I did mine. We are always there for each other but that phase of our life was over when we were living together, as elder brothers to our younger brothers and as teenage kids to our parents, all living under the same roof. 

The phase that followed took several different shapes with a lot of changes in my life. This included leaving my house to come to America to build a career. This was the phase of independence and adventure. It was a good feeling to be out in a different country experiencing a different way of life and a different culture. There were a lot of internships and random rotations in different hospitals. This included staying in temporary housing such as with friends or at hospital accommodations. This included a year long jobless period and also a time when my visa was rejected in the aftermath of 9/11 when a lot of muslim students from various countries were not being allowed easy access to jobs in the West. This same phase was filled with freedom and independence. This was the time to go out in the world and try to make a name for yourself. I was so engrossed into myself and my own life and ambition that the thought did not even cross my mind that my parents and brothers might be missing me just like I was missing my older brother when he left home a few years ago. 

This phase ended when I finally got a job. This was the time to settle down and begin my own family. I got a nice apartment in a very beautiful part of town. I got married and within a couple of years we had our first baby girl. Three years later we had a baby boy and just like that we had a family of four. When kids are little, there is pretty much nothing else that you can accomplish. Rearing the kids is more than a full time job. We were in a foreign country and did not have any help from family. Most of our friends were in similar situations. Having been brought up in Pakistan, both my wife and I had grown up with a lot of servants in our houses but here we could not afford any hired help, just like everybody else. I was also going through a medical residency where you are easily working eighty hours or more per week. There was literally nothing else on my mind other than work and kids. In some ways, it was hard to manage but each smile and each kiss on the cheeks of the kids made any hardship easy to endure. Around this time my father died which was one of my life’s biggest losses but still since I was not living with him at that time, my day to day personal life did not change that much since I had left my father’s home about a decade ago. 

People say that the strongest love that you can have is towards your child. Yes we love our parents, our siblings and other family members. Yes there is the romantic kind of love as well but that is slightly different. We are talking about love towards blood relatives. But it is said that the love towards a child is even stronger than the love towards a parent. It may not be true for everyone but most people will agree with that. The way you get happy with your child’s happiness and the way your heart is torn when your child is sad or hurt in any way can be compared to emotions towards anyone else, even towards your parents. I have always had a theory behind this. Because our children are made from us biologically, we can feel their happiness and pain as if we feel our own emotions. Our parents feel the same way about us for the same reason. Our intensity of these emotions is not as high for our own parents because we are made from them but they are not made from us. An analogy would be that if your hand is hurt, you will also hurt because your hand is part of yourself. But the hand may not feel the pain if another part of your body is hurt such as the chest or the abdomen. The hand will feel it if one of your fingers is hurt because now the finger is a part of the hand. 

When my kids were in elementary school, I was a very involved dad. I would not lose any opportunity to volunteer at their school. Most of the volunteer activities were done by moms and a lot of times I would also feel a bit awkward in a room filled with kids, teachers and moms but I didn’t care. I enjoyed being around my kids and their school lives so much that every few months I would try to get involved in some way. My job was very demanding and it was hard to take time off but once you set you mind to something, nothing is difficult. I would take a couple of hours away from work and go to the school to play my part. 

One of these activities was to go and have lunch with my kids when they were in elementary school. I would find out what time the lunch period was. It was typically not more than just twenty minutes. I would take time off from work about half an hour prior to that. I would reach the school and sign in to the visitors book at the front office. They would usually give me a sticker that said “Visitor” that I would place on my lapel. I would go to the cafeteria and stand right outside the door of the cafeteria. The bell would ring and I would start seeing little kids coming out of their classrooms. Kids this age need a lot of reorientation in whatever they are doing. Once you give them direction, they follow very well. They need authority figures. There were plenty of those in the form of teachers and their aides. Each child was cuter than the other. My heart would swell with such cuteness overload. 

I would look all around the school and dozens of little children forming lines to start going to the cafeteria. Some of them would be carrying lunch bags and others would be lining up in the cafeteria cue to buy their lunch. My heart would race a little in the anticipation of seeing my daughter (and a few years later, my son.)  Then there would be the moment when I would finally find my child in the crowd of kids. As soon as my eyes would meet my daughter’s, there would be a big smile on her face. I can still remember it being a shy smile. For her it would be a very big moment because her two lives would meet at this moment. Her school life and her home life. She would see her dad in front of her classmates experiencing a little bit of shyness and probably some embarrassment because something different was happening. Nobody else’s dad was there but her dad was there. Sometimes she would be too shy to acknowledge me and I had to go to her and hug her and other times she would break the line and come to me. 

We would go to the school dining room. It was a long room with multiple tables and chairs. It appeared that the kids had made small groups of friends and some of the friends would always sit with one another every day. The chairs were small and well suited for elementary school age children. I would look and feel like a giant from Gulliver’s Travels sitting on that chair. In front of each child on the table were a variety of kids’ foods like Goldfish crackers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple slices and flavored yogurt in kid-friendly packaging. There used to be two lunch ladies, one of them helping everyone with a big smile on her face and the other one with an annoyed frown and a wrinkled forehead. 

Initially my daughter’s little friends would be shy and ate in silence but they could not help staring at me with their big innocent eyes. My presence there was probably a big change in the monotony of their daily school lives. Then one of them would muster up some courage and say in their cute voice, “Are you Zaina’s dad?” I would reply with a big smile, “Yes I am! And what’s your name?” She would reply excitedly, “I”m Bella.” And then another girl would say her name and before you know it all the girls around the table listening in to the conversation would start telling me their names. The lunch room would become quite loud within a few moments and the frown-browed lunch lady would give out a loud holler for everyone to keep quiet while they finished their lunch. She would have to do the same about every five minutes or so. 

The lunch hour was not more than fifteen or twenty minutes. The bell would ring and the kids would start making lines again to get back to the classroom. I would kiss my daughter and hug her and say goodbye and go back to the front office to sign myself out. As I would be driving back to work, I would feel very fulfilled as if I did not need anything more from that day. At the end of the workday when I would go back home and see my daughter again, we would both smile with the memories of lunch that day. For the next several months, I couldn’t help bringing up memories from lunch. If she were to tell me a story about any of her friends, I would ask, “Is Leena the one who was wearing a big bow on her hair when I came to your school for lunch?”

I kept doing this a couple of times each year she was in elementary school. Then she graduated to middle school. She was excited and so was I. I went to middle school parent information night and the teachers did an excellent job of telling us what the kids would be studying and what their course materials would be. The school building was really nice. The classrooms were comfortable and each teacher had put on nice hangings on the walls pertaining to the subject that they were teaching. They also had us leave little notes in the desks for the kids that they would read in the morning. They talked about the difference in the school philosophy between elementary and middle school where their emphasis was to give more independence and responsibility to the growing kids so that in a few years they were ready for high school and eventually for college. They had designed activities for the kids to equip them with the knowledge and skills of practical life such as giving them an assignment to do a load of laundry at home and to cook a basic meal even if it was to fry an egg for breakfast. I was quite impressed by the thought that was put into designing such a comprehensive curriculum for the kids, until the end of the presentation when they asked us parents if we had any questions.

Never being shy to state my mind or ask questions when in a group, I swiftly raised my hand. The teacher diverted her attention to me and signaled with a nod for me to ask my question.

“I’m looking at my daughter’s daily schedule and there are two time periods in the afternoon that show up as free time. One of them is probably lunch time and the other says study hall which I assume is when they are given time to study. Can I come to spend time with my daughter in either one of the two periods or can I come just during lunch time?” I inquired. 

“Well parents are not allowed to have lunch with their kids during school hours, sorry.” She responded. 

For a moment I could not believe what she said.

“I’m sorry I don’t understand. You mean I cannot have lunch with my daughter during school days anymore?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face. 

“Yes you heard that right. There are several other ways that you can decide to spend time with your child during school. You can consider volunteering for different activities which happen during school hours and also after-school activities. If you want to talk to your child’s teachers, all you need to do is contact them and they will be happy to schedule a time to meet you and address any concerns or questions that you might have.” She tried to explain. 

“Why do you have a policy like that? Is it at the school level or the district level?” I inquired. 

“You will have to call our main line and ask to speak with someone in the Superintendent’s office to know the answer. I assume its for the safety of your own child sir. We try to restrict the number of non-student visitors in the school. Also middle school is a bit different than elementary school and here we try to make the kids more independent and start getting ready for the real world out there. When they are seniors in high school, they can be allowed to leave school premises for lunch and you can spend time with them if you wish.” She explained. 

I did not see any value in prolonging this conversation so I just stayed quiet in return. But in my mind I felt sad and discouraged. One of the things that I enjoyed the most as a parent was being taken away from me. My mind drifted to the times when during the COVID pandemic, the hospitals were not allowing visitors with elderly patients to prevent the spread of infection but the family members found it very hard not be at their parents’ bedside and that too at a very critical and vulnerable time where they needed their company the most. 

During the rest of the years that my daughter was in school, I never got a chance again to go and have lunch with her. I thought of participating in some other ways such as volunteering but it did not come easy to me. Once I signed up to be a cashier at the pizza stand at a school event but that’s all I ended up doing. I could not spend any time with my daughter. Also most other parent volunteers were moms and as a single dad, I felt quite out of place. Some other dads were coaching afterschool activities such as sports or boy scouts but I simply was not interested in those activities. I simply wanted to have lunch with my child which I couldn’t. 

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As I walk past my daughter’s bedroom a dozen times during the day, I can sense the emptiness and the silence that it now represents. Sometimes I open the door and take a look inside just to make sure that all her things are in order. I look at the well made bed with some of her stuffed toys laying on top looking cute but motionless. I look at her desk and chair which has not been used in days. I look at her closet filled with clothes waiting to be worn again some day. The whole room appears to share my longing for her to visit again as soon as she can and as frequently as her college commitments allow. 

I think how in just a matter of another few years, my son will also be gone to college and I will enter a new phase of my life. Being an eternal optimist, I look forward to the next “empty-nester” phase of my life which will hopefully bring with a lot of free time that I can spend on myself pursuing various hobbies and activities such as travel, things that I could not previously do because of having to take care of the kids. I’m sure I will be able to adapt to the new phase and make the most out of it but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the previous phase will be gone. The phase when my kids were little and life was all about taking care of them in every possible way.

As I look back at that phase of life, even though I put all that I had into rearing these kids, I still think about things that I could have done more. Could I have played more tennis with my daughter? Could I have watched more cartoons with my son? Could I have spent less time on my phone? Could I have gone out with my friends less and spent more time at home reading with the kids? But these are all the things that I could control. The middle school not letting me have lunch with my child was not in my control. It was a restriction that was imposed upon me by an institution that I was sending my kids to and I had to abide by their rules and regulations. Should I have gone to more school meetings and advocated for parent-child lunches during school hours? Should I have put together a group of like-minded parents and tried to arrange a meeting with the Superintendent? Was I the only parent who was wishing to have lunch with my child? 

A school’s goal should be to constantly find ways for the parents to be more involved in their school lives. Already there are a lot of concerns across the board that kids may be learning things in school that the parents wouldn’t necessarily want them to. Conservative parents worry about the “woke” ideology that the kids learn in schools in liberal districts. The opposite is also true when liberal parents find their kids start espousing conservative ideas and blame the schools and teachers for that. You would think that if the parents’ involvement in school activities is increased, the gap could be bridged a little more effectively.

When I look at my kids and see them grow into the amazing young adults that they are now, I cannot thank their school enough. They provided them with all the tools to have successful, happy and good lives. They nurtured them into quality individuals. Yes they say that it takes a village to raise a child but the primary two entities in the entire village doing that are the parents and the teachers. Teachers can be given equal if not more credit than parents to shape up the personalities of the children. But if I were to be given a survey about the overall job that the American Middle School did at training my child, I would have given a ten on a performance scale but I’m sorry to say that I will have to give a nine, simply because I still think that they should have let me have lunch with my child.