The Red Tupperware Lunchbox

Little Boxes Tucked Away, Filled with Shame

The lunchroom at Lynchburg Clay Elementary, with its low ceiling, gray-painted floors, and long tables placed together in rows.  Smells of simple foods and harsh cleaners waft through the air, a thin coating of grease covering all the surfaces.  The floor was both sticky and slippery.  At least that is how I remember it.

My small rural school in Southern Ohio had a lunchroom that fed students grades first through eighth.  The cafeteria staff required adherence to their rules with a military kind of precision. It makes sense to me now why it was so strict; they were tasked with feeding eight grades of students in their short 2 ½ hour window 5 days a week.

I was generally a buyer.  On rare occasions, I was a packer.  My mother never one to embrace the more mundane tasks of parenting usually had me buy my lunch.  I would eat whatever was plopped on my divided melamine tray.  I would sit in envy and stare at the meals carefully created by my classmates’ mothers.  It was the 70’s and metal lunch boxes adorned with the popular characters of the day filled the tables in the lunchroom.  I think I had a new one every year, from Barbie to Holly Hobby.  My mother would purchase new lunch boxes for my brother and I at the beginning of the school year, and I was so hopeful that she would pack my lunch just like my friends’ mothers.  It usually started that way but fizzled out by the end of the 2^nd month of school, when I would again eat the school fare of the day.

The summer before my 6^th-grade year, Mom and I were invited to a Tupperware party put on by my cousins.  It was a day for all the women of the family to get together as much as it was to purchase plastic.  As the party got underway and the new wares were passed around, a red lunchbox began to make its way toward my mother and me.  I held it in my hands, it was smooth and rectangular.  It was red with the signature opaque lid.  When I opened it up there were several little Tupperware containers inside, all red with opaque lids.  It was like a puzzle in that each little container only fit inside the lunchbox in one specific configuration.  I pulled all of the pieces out and then struggled to get them back in before it was time to pass it on.  I felt such pride when I fit them snuggly back into their places. 

I am unclear about how it happened, but we came home with that lunchbox ordered and paid for.  I was in heaven; my expectations began to soar as I imagined all the kids at school who would be envious of me when I opened the red box and started pulling out all of the carefully nestled containers filled with the delights of an 11-year-old’s imagination.

When Mom tells the story now, she emphasizes how I began to gain weight because she was packing my lunch and how she had to make me go back to eating school food so I could lose weight.  All I wanted was to be cared for and nurtured.  I see that now.  I loved the order that the lunch box provided, everything was in its place.  A nice contrast to the chaos of our home.  I just wanted to be like the other kids in my class who were excited to see what their mothers packed them.  I can see that now.

From my vantage point as an adult who has raised 4 children to adulthood my only crime was eating the food my mother packed.  There was nothing to feel shame about. But I carried the shame that something was very wrong because I gained weight when my mother packed my lunch. The story in my mind was of a girl who was so bad that her mother had to punish her by making her eat school food.

Shame is a funny thing.  It is said that guilt makes you feel bad for something you did, and shame makes you feel bad for who you are.  This is just one of the stories where I bore the shame from my childhood.  Until now, until I could recognize that I was the kid in this story.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  I just ate what was provided for me.  I was just a normal child, getting ready for a huge growth spurt the next year.  Unfortunately, the damage was already done, and I would see myself as fat and not capable of making good food decisions well into adulthood.

In the last 2 years, I have left dieting behind.  I was placed on a diet at 6 months old because my mother thought I was getting “too chubby.”  She switched me from formula to 2% milk to trim me down.  Listening to her tell the story, I always felt like it was my fault, and I should have done something different than eating the formula she offered me.  Again, I carried the shame.  To write this now it sounds ludicrous, but to my underdeveloped brain, it was the only thing that made sense.  I was the problem. I was bad.

I say all of this to say I am working myself through shame around my physical body and weight.  I have stopped weighing myself and will never go on another diet.  I am heavier than I would like but I am healthy. I am seeing the little girl within through the eyes of a caring mother.  I am letting her know every day that she is ok just the way she is.

The truth is I was just a little girl who wanted a mother to care for her.  I wanted the organization and predictability of that red Tupperware lunch box.  I wanted to take off the lid and open each little surprise waiting for me inside.  I wanted to be loved. But what I have carried with me, in little boxes inside my heart is shame. 

If you are carrying shame, it may be time to examine it.  It may not even be about you.  You may have just been doing what normal kids do.  Looking at it through your adult eyes can help you shed some of the shame you have borne too long.

If you would like to talk about your shame privately you can message me directly below.