Packing lunch

Auschwitz-Birkenau: selection site

Matt went back to college today. It's a long trip for him: a plane, a subway, a train, and then a taxi. I got up early to pack him a lunch he could take with him.

Packing lunch -- an ordinary act I used to take so for granted when the lunches came two a day, every day. Now, it's almost a sacred act, feeding my children when they allow themselves to be fed by me. But, in that quiet kitchen, the rectangle of torn wax paper on the counter brought with it all the mothers who carefully packed food for a trip they didn't

Auschwitz-Birkenau: end of the tracks

want to take. They had no idea where they were going or what they'd find when they got there but they did what mothers do -- they packed food. They probably stood in their kitchens, terrified, but they did what they could do.

Long after the carefully wrapped food was eaten, too many of them sat on their suitcases, with their children all around them, in the stand of beautiful trees, and waited their turn.

It would be a lot easier to move through life wrapping sandwiches in oblivious peace...but I'm not sure I can do that ow that I know, now that I have seen.

For the moment, contentment with not knowing, not realizing, not seeing what happened, feels like sleepwalking to me.

Auschwitz-Birkenau: the woods near the gas chambers

A cookie?

One day to go.

I've gotten pretty good at the whole food thing. The way it works is the servers come by but, because you can't look up or around, all you see of them are their hands and the bowl or tray of food they're carrying. You let them know how much you want - if you want more or none - by a series of hand gestures. The food has been consistently good vegetarian fare with lots of various forms of soy products. However, I don't care how hungry I get or how indiscriminate I am supposed to be, I will never like lima beans. And, after the first day, I drew the line at the morning rice soup which I may never be spiritually sound enough, from a Buddhist point of view, to choke down. I will always discriminate against that.

At lunch, which was always our last meal of the day, I'd finished all I'd been served. After that, tea or hot water was served. Next thing I knew, a white-aproned waist appeared in front of me with a plate of cookies in its hands. Oreo cookies. I thought it was a joke.

In violation of everything I knew I was supposed to do, I looked up at the young guy holding the plate and, without a word, using only my eyes, asked if he was for real, if he was actually offering me an Oreo cookie. After six days of green and white fare, the sight of that cookie was a shock, a joke, a punch line. He smiled a "yes" back at me.

That moment, that exchange of delight, was even better than the cookie.

12 July 2007