Peanut Butter Sandwiches

By Karen Lamb.

Why is this naughty girl paying me attention? I am one of the quiet ones, but I love the way she doesn’t seem to care – she’s noisy when the teacher says be quiet! And I really want that donut she says she will buy me – the chocolate icing is so thick. My other friend eats them all the time – she has her own special way, licking that icing so slowly. I want to do that too, but usually I can only watch.

I’m going to be like that girl and have a donut too! I hate this sandwich my mum has given me. But I feel bad for my mum. I think she is sad, and she just gives me peanut butter because my brothers like it. I don’t think she wants to make us sandwiches at all really. All her jobs make her sad, or angry.

I want to show my friend how even though I have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, it isn’t what I chose and it isn’t what I like. It isn’t even what my mum chose or what my mum likes. I crush that sandwich and it is squishy between my fingers as I throw it in the bin. My friend laughs – this is so unlike me.

My mum would be very angry if she saw me doing this. Angry because I am bad, and sad because she is not fooling me – I know she hates peanut butter, I know she hates looking after me, and I know she hates me too.

And part of me knows I have betrayed the secret of our anger and our hate.

I understand better now. My mum hated her job and her life, expected to be happy making school lunches every day. Either that, or go to work in an office so we could afford to buy our school lunch. With no investment in her education, to prepare her for work she could excel at and enjoy, there was only the women’s work of the seventies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Lamb moved to Geelong from Melbourne to enjoy an early retirement. Always interested in writing, she is now taking advantage of her extra available time to try her hand at memoir – particularly focussed on the experience of homeschooling her son (before the pandemic made it fashionable). She enjoys Geelong’s urban, yet relaxed lifestyle and is passionate about creative pursuits and climate change activism.