Forgetting the Class Snack

By Jennifer Schaller

Finding a sense of self-compassion when forgetting the class snack.

I was reading over final papers from my semester of teaching and busy all day with conferences for my English classes; meanwhile, at my daughter’s Kindergarten class, fourteen children sat nervously waiting, bellies grumbling, as they stared daggers at my daughter, while chanting “We want Cheez-its! We want Cheez-its!” Eh, maybe it didn’t happen quite like that.

Regardless, each month at my daughter’s school, in alphabetical order, parents are required to bring a snack, and I am usually ready days in advance. Sometimes I add a cute and Pinterest-y flourish—name tags for each kid, or on St. Patrick’s Day, each carrot cupcake had green clovers I cut out and attached to toothpicks. It wasn’t the healthiest snack, but at least there were carrots and raisins in the mix.

Then one time I forgot.

I hadn’t checked my phone messages all morning, and in the afternoon, I had plenty: two from my daughter’s teacher and three from my husband who was confused—Jennifer always remembers snack, right? Upon reading the texts, I felt a familiar burning sensation run up my body—call it shame, humiliation, sadness. I’m pretty sure forgetting snack shouldn’t bring up a laundry list of self-defeating malevolence.

When I was a teenager, my mom forgot a lot, mostly me, a few times after school, and at least once, when I was a toddler, she forgot me, restrained in my car seat while she locked her keys in a running car to fetch something inside our house. I had nightmares for years afterward that I was in the backseat of a car rolling erratically downhill with no one at the wheel. For this reason, I vowed to never forget anything as a parent.

Then one time I forgot.

Who cares, right? Every parent forgets some things. But I care, mostly about my reaction—that burning sensation of shame. It worries me that I would feel like such a failure over something so minor. Sometimes I wish I had a doppelganger, a woman plump around her middle, soft in her thirties, who tries her best; she would be me but outside of me, there to let me feel for myself what I don’t feel: compassion. I would say out loud to her the things I think to myself, “How could you forget? How could you disappoint your daughter?” As my insults spiraled through the air, I’d hear my harsh tone. I’d understand why I need to quiet those voices.

I’m not completely sure of the difference between self-pity and self-sympathy. It’s a hard line to envision drawing for myself. I was always taught to suck things up: pity and pouting would get me nowhere. So I suck up the various blows life deals me, and that philosophy has certainly served me well, with a few exceptions, like when I forgot snack.

It’s sad that I could give more sympathy to doppelganger me than real me, the me who behaves more like a human than a super-mother. Real me doesn’t get my sympathy. I would like to feel for her, even though it feels false and strange. I’ll try it:

Oh that Jennifer, she forgot her daughter’s snack. It’s understandable. Her semester does end in two weeks. One could see how she might forget. She’ll try harder next time. She will say everyone makes mistakes, even Mommy. She’ll realize the burning shame she feels is not something she wants to pass down. In place of sucking it up, she’ll keep striving for self-compassion, or self-sympathy, or even just the opposite of self-loathing.

Jennifer Schaller is a teacher who lives in Albuquerque with her husband and two children. She usually has a pile of papers to grade and a small child’s nose to wipe, but every so often she ekes out time for writing, some of which has appeared in Brain, Child, Georgetown Review, Sonora Review, and This American Life.

Photo: foodnetwork.com

By Jennifer Schaller

Rushing to place my groceries on the conveyor belt before my two-year-old screamed in line, a store clerk, about to weigh my produce, asked, “Are these WIC?” My incredulous eyebrows raised, I answered “NO” and kept piling my groceries before her. I live in New Mexico, where we rank number one in childhood hunger for the entire nation.

More than once at more than one grocery store, clerks have asked whether I pay for my groceries with government assistance. WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children; it’s a federally funded program that gives pregnant mothers and children assistance with buying healthy food. This time my particular cashier answered my no with a shocked, “No?” Annoyed, I responded, “NO,” making it quite clear with my tone that I wanted to jump over the counter and punch her in the face.

If she had asked me one more time, I would have let her have it: a tirade about how I worked hard, went to college, got a degree, two in fact, and then busted my butt gaining a professional job. However, a tirade would not only vent my anger at this poor woman, but it would also let out the fiery rage I feel every time someone places me neatly in a box. And letting an unsuspecting woman, however ignorant she was, really have it would make me feel like crap. I strive to be humble—call it a byproduct of my single-parent upraising. Sure, maybe I was on welfare as a child, but that doesn’t mean I can never move into a higher economic class using only my wits, stamina, and some college loans.

The cashiers are always strangers, so I assume they base their judgment of my financial need on my appearance. I’m a dark skinned Latina. There are other criteria that may make others believe I am in need of government assistance: I have more than one child, two to be exact, I shop in the middle of the day on weekdays because my work schedule allows this (not because I’m unemployed), and I live in a poor state. In 2012, 53 percent of young children in New Mexico’s lived in single-parent households. I suppose when a person adds all this up, I could be placed neatly into a box—the WIC mom box. What does a WIC mom look like? Apparently, she looks like me. She may look like you.

The irony is that the cashiers who ask me this question are always Latina. During a different grocery shopping trip, when I handed a clerk my credit card, in a Spanish accent thicker than my grandmother’s, she asked, “EBT?” EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer, and it’s a debit card for welfare. I had the urge to say “College?” in a snarky tone, but I didn’t. Spewing anger at other people’s stereotypes will not change anything. Hopefully my answer of “No” is enough to make someone think differently. No is what I had to say to my grandmother when she told me at the age of twenty-five to start having kids before she died. I wasn’t ready to be shoved inside that box of motherhood, not at twenty-five. I wanted to go to grad school.

While 30 percent of New Mexico children are considered poor, and 13 percent more live in extreme poverty, it’s not unheard of for a minority woman to attend college and obtain gainful employment, even if she has two small kids. I know government assistance is a direly needed entity for many children and families in my beautiful state. When I was a child, my mom would go without food the fourth week of every month until the next allotment of welfare came, so my brother and I could eat. I learned from her experience. Nearly thirty years later, I feel I’m still climbing out of someone else’s box—brown, black, or white; WIC mom or non-WIC mom.

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Forgetting the Class Snack

Check Box: WIC Mom or Non-WIC Mom