I Didn’t Know This Was What Normal Felt Like

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Antwerp, right?

I can’t say I had a happy childhood, but every once in a while—really rarely—I’d catch a glimpse of what I thought normal felt like. Because I wouldn’t exactly call my childhood “normal.”

You’ll figure out what wasn’t normal about it if you read more of my posts. But here I want to talk about my school years, and specifically one part of them: the daily lunch break.

I was never especially fond of school. There are kids who get bored on weekends and during summer break. Boredom is something I almost never struggled with. I always found ways to keep myself occupied. I understood I had to go to school, that it was necessary to get a certain kind of training, but what I enjoyed far more was developing myself in ways of my own choosing. I especially loved dancing and drawing. Those were what I preferred to do in my free time. Playing with dolls was fun too. And every now and then I’d go over to a friend’s house or she’d come over to mine.

My parents fought a lot. That created tension, but I didn’t know any different. For me, that was just normal.

When I was about eight, they got divorced—a bitter, drawn-out divorce. And I wasn’t prepared for that. Suddenly Dad had a “new family” with a new wife and new kids. And I didn’t really fit in there, because I belonged to the “old family,” the one he wanted to leave behind. But the court had ordered that I spend every weekend with him.

And now that Dad wasn’t around anymore, Mom started taking it out on me. That only added more tension. Because Mom was a bundle of nerves who would completely lose it over the smallest thing. My grades started to suffer. And a year later—when I was about nine—I was diagnosed with migraines.

Partly because of the stress at home, things got harder and harder at school too. From about age eleven on I was being bullied, and it never really got better. School days felt long and heavy, and I rarely found any real peace at home either. Not during the week, when I had to absorb my mother’s outbursts, and not on the weekends, when my father and his new family were stuck with me.

All of that is just to set the scene. Because what I actually wanted to talk about is the daily school lunch break.

During the first years of elementary school I had to stay for lunch, because both my parents worked full-time. But once I was about ten, I was allowed to stay home alone, so I could also come home in the middle of the day for lunch. That felt better to me than staying at school. At least at home I might still get to do something I actually enjoyed before I had to head back. And it felt more like a real break than sitting through lunch at school.

Especially once the bullying started, I longed to be home for a little while, to escape the daily misery. But real rest never quite came. As the lunch break wore on and the time to walk back to school got closer, a knot would form in my stomach, and I’d head back toward the slaughterhouse with my heart in my throat.

Then one nice day my mother sprained her ankle. And suddenly—unfortunately 😉—she couldn’t go to work. Which meant she was a little less stressed. On an even nicer morning she actually asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch. Now, my mother wasn’t particularly gifted in the kitchen, but there was one dish she could make really well, and that was Belgium’s national meal: Steak and Fries. (Yes, I’m capitalizing it out of pure national pride. I’ll own that.)

It was a special experience.

When I came home from school I could already smell the hot fryer oil. Everything was ready: the steak was seasoned and waiting to go into the pan—only the butter still needed to heat up. The oil was at temperature and the hand-cut fries had already been pre-fried. The plates were set with the usual sides. I could just sit down. A real feast. Truly.

And you know what’s strange?

Normally I felt so vulnerable when it was time to go back to school. But that knot that usually formed in my stomach? It didn’t show up. I just walked back calmly. I wasn’t even worrying about whether I’d get bullied again that afternoon. Because I had been taken care of. A meal had been cooked specially for me. My favorite dish. And my mother had even been kind. It had actually been pleasant.

On the way back to school it hit me that a lot of my classmates experienced this every single day—people for whom this was just ordinary, who didn’t know any different. Not that they got their favorite meal every day, but that their mother had cooked for them. Because back then, in Belgium, it was still completely normal to have a hot meal in the middle of the day.

Does this story bring back any memories for you? Feel free to share them in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Photo: Documerica