Lunch Pails and Brown Paper Bags

I still bring a lunch bag to school everyday.

Packed inside is a sandwhich, juice, chips, and occasionally a nice sweet.  If not a sandwhich, leftovers from the day before with some rice, a spork, and napkins to clean up the mess.  I don't make it though, I'm lucky enough to have my parents find time to do such a simple task...  at least it seems simple.

I mean, how difficult can it be?  Get a brown paper bag or a lunch pail with some small plastic bags on the side, pack them with the goods, seal it up, and head on my way.  I can do it myself if I really wanted to in less than five minutes.  I mean how difficult can it be?

With 6 weeks left, I'm beginning to understand more why they take the time to put in a good quality lunch for me.  Something that I think would only take me five minutes to make actually wouldn't even come close to amount to the quality that parents could put in lunch pails and brown paper bags; it took them twenty one years to perfect the exact recipe to fill a bag of love.

Call it childish, but I don't ask them to make it; they just do.  With me soon to be graduating from college... I think they're trying to do whatever they can to remind themselves that I'm still their child; that despite me becoming a grown man with a head full of hair and a back carrying the world they can still help and that I could depend on them.  In essence, they want to feel that I still need them to live and go through life.  That something so simple as providing lunch pails and packing brown paper bags is a necessity in my life...

... I think the sad part of all of this is that I've realized that... it's not; it used to be, but not anymore.  I'm not saying that I don't appreciate it because I appreciate all that they've done beyond words and written material; far beyond story book rhymes and college textbooks.  Far beyond allowance and providing for the family.  Far beyond birthdays, dinners, get-togethers, and parties.  Far beyond; I appreciate it so far beyond it all.

... and I think the sadder part of all of this, is that they've realized it too.  I'm able, I'm independent, and I'm in my adulthood now.  They're no longer at the door holding my lunch pails and brown paper bags as I rush off to school and leave home for seven hours of school anxiously waiting to come back home with food ready on the stove.  Now it's a simple note on the table as I wake up at the crack of dawn to start my day: "Anak, don't forget your baon; love Mom & Dad."

... I'll never forget my baon, and I'll never forget what truly lies in my lunch pails and brown paper bags; I'll never make it as good as you have.