It’s been a long time since I’ve packed a sack lunch. Recently, our granddaughter had an event where she needed one, and I found myself back in the lunch packing business.

When my eldest son was in elementary school, he said he didn’t like what the school cafeteria served.

That surprised me. I have great memories of the huge rolls our cafeteria served in high school. Our lunch ladies cooked a delicious chicken pot pie, and we enjoyed big pizza squares covered in cheese.

I was raised that food equals love, so there was no way my little boy was going hungry. I agreed to pack his lunch every day. Plus, I was already fixing lunches for my husband, so the procedure was familiar.

Husband was easy – two slices of turkey and a slice of cheese on whole-wheat bread, Oreo cookies, an apple, and a butterscotch candy. Son was a little harder as he wanted variety.

Some days, Nick found a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his Thundercats lunch box. Other days cold pizza or chicken nuggets, two of his favorites. I kept a supply of McDonald’s sauces on hand for the nugget days.

When Nick was in the third grade, he said he was especially hungry at school and needed me to pack more food.

So, I added extras – more grapes, a Twinkie on occasion, an extra sandwich and more cookies. He was still coming home hungry. After a few days of his raiding the pantry when he got home, the interrogation began.

It seems my entrepreneurial third grader was selling his lunch and pocketing the money. He said he had food the other kids wanted. He was providing a service, he explained.

That enterprise came to an abrupt end.

When his brothers started elementary school, they had the same feelings about the cafeteria, so I found myself making four lunches every morning.

The assembly line was in motion at 6 a.m.

In addition to the food, I had three small plastic containers, and each one contained four quarters. Those were thrown in the bag in case the boys wanted an ice cream sandwich.

There were complaints from time to time. I was told in no uncertain terms to stop putting “mommy” notes in their lunchbox. The other kids made fun of them.

Crusts were to be cut off the sandwiches and apples were too hard to eat. And the always present request – more cookies.

In elementary school, they had their own lunch boxes – a Roger Rabbit for one and Star Wars for another boy. Lunch boxes often came home looking like they’d been in a war.

I found out that in a pinch, their lunch boxes substituted for second base or a set of drums.

Middle school meant bigger appetites, so the container changed. I upgraded to larger paper bags to accommodate growing appetites.

Lunches now required triple-decker PB&Js, half a sleeve of cookies, a quart-sized bag of chips and a drink to add to the milk they’d buy at school.

Were those lunches nutritious?

Borderline. The chips and cookies weren’t healthy, but their mother is a food pusher, and she wanted to be sure her babies were at least eating something.

Rationalization is a wonderful tool.

Making lunch for my granddaughter took me back to the days of drawing hearts on a piece of paper and tucking it into my child’s lunch box.

And, yes, my granddaughter found a note in her paper bag that day, decorated with hearts and smiley faces.

Lunch duty isn’t all bad.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.