The Lunchbox Doodles
It started when my oldest son was five,
the day that kindergarten would arrive.
His mother thought, or hoped, or had a hunch:
he’d like a little loving with his lunch.It didn’t take me long, and wasn’t hard
to draw a simple doodle on a card.
I’ll never know how come I chose to jot
a happy little flower in a pot.Although the first I made for him was lost
(most likely, I suspect that it was tossed),
he asked if I would draw another one,
and so I did. And thus it had begun:
I’d draw another doodle every day
from August to the end of school in May.And when he entered first, it didn’t end:
another year continuing the trend.From there, when he began the second grade,
I added in the poems I had made,
and if THAT wasn’t hard enough to do,
his younger brother got a doodle too.But when I wasn’t seeing them as much,
this loving labor kept our hearts in touch.
Year four, I started drawing three a day
and started shading variants of gray.Before another series could begin –
although I loved the work – it stretched me thin.
My sons and I agreed that it was fair:
if I would COLOR one, then they would share.Year five flew by. Today year six has passed,
with still about a dozen ’til the last.Each day, another doodle will appear.
It’s something worth repeating every year.
It’s how I show I love them, in a way:
by doodling and writing every day.I may have missed delivering a few,
but swear I’ve done the best that I could do.
And now, with sixteen-hundred ninety done:
I plan to doodle on, and on, and on….