Dinner in a Bag(gie)

I'd promised to deliver deluxe peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for their dinners and Cole and his friend hopped out of the car and with thanks and a wave they were off.  I was oddly excited about preparing a snack-supper for these two. Feeding them seemed the only tangible thing they needed from me. They could even have walked to their destination on their own, but I insisted on driving them, because I was sure they wanted my company on the drive.

Also absent from our dinner table that evening would be my Man, so I decided to go the easy-does-it-dinner route and declared deluxe PB&Js for everyone. Meg entered the kitchen after I was four sandwiches deep in dinner prep and offered to lend a hand.

"Super! Grab four baggies and load these sandwiches into them."

"Mom, we're out of sandwich baggies."

"OK, we'll wrap 'em in parchment paper, hand me some scotch tape."

"Mom, we're out of tape."

"Run to the garage and get that blue painter's tape."

"Mom, the blue tape isn't sticking to the parchment."

"There's packing tape in the bottom drawer, try that."

"Hey, that worked!"

"Ok, now go get some brown lunch bags from the pantry and bring 'em here."

"Mom, we don't have any brown bags!"

"Are there any white ones?"

"No."

"Get two gallon sized baggies, we'll just have to put everything in those."

"TWO GALLON bags? That's pretty big."

"No, two, comma, gallon bags, two, one gallon bags. Two bags total one gallon apiece."

"Ohhhhhhh OK, I got 'em."

Finally, we added cookies and apple slices to the bag with the PB&Js and I grabbed the two, one gallon bags and 

...headed out the door to deliver dinner as promised

...and arrived just

...after pizza had been delivered to them by their youth leader.

"Thanks anyway Mom," said he with a grin toward me and his eyes toward the hot pizza, "do you mind leaving the apples and the cookies?"

There I stood, unnecessary once more. 

A wave of sentiment was just about to knock me to the sand until certain images began floating through my head. 

Then I decided that maybe,

just maybe...

he still needs me...

just ...

...a little bit!

{Deluxe PB&J HERE}