When packing lunch for my kids, I would pack a box of spaghetti, hoping it would stay hot for them until lunchtime. To round out the meal, I would slice some nice cool pears, fresh out of the refrigerator, and hope they’d stay crisp and cold until lunchtime. Then I would put the box of spaghetti in a lunch bag and the bag of pears on top of it. I never followed up to see whether the spaghetti was hot and the pears were cold come lunchtime. Maybe I was scared of what the answer would be. Nevertheless, I did this everyday.
Looking back, it’s clear that the hot or cold temperature of food was really up to the natural state of those particular foods. It wasn’t up to me or anyone to control them. What I wanted was the impossible. I wanted to freeze the state of the spaghetti and pears, so that my kids could enjoy it as if they were eating it at home. What I never considered was whether my children even cared about this. They never asked or demanded their food be hot or cold. I was the only one thinking about it, stressing over it.
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