lunchtime

the food that built my days

Friday

I pick up my wallet from my bag and slip out of the library. I always leave a bit furtively, like someone’s watching (no one ever has) or I’m not allowed to leave (I’m allowed to do whatever I want). The hallway is worn where so many people before me have walked this wing, from the ICU to the staff elevator. Here, the floor is a worn, soft blue. I imagine it was once brighter and smoother. This hospital is no longer new, but it’s not so old that the floors have been replaced. These are original to the building.

The elevator is the same. The floor in this one got wrecked by something, and is currently being held down with some raggedy duct tape. My office neighbour said that her husband, who is the regional director in charge of facilities, was appalled that someone had done that - but there have been other things to do, and it’s only a staff elevator. Plus these elevators are due to be replaced this year, how much do you want to put into them now?

The white is worn off of all the numbers on the buttons, but my hand goes to the right one without thinking.

On the fifth floor, I step into the back hall next to the kitchen. It smells of industrial dish soap and cooking food, nothing specific, just food. I slam the button to open the automatic door harder than I need to, and then I am in the cafeteria proper. Again, the floor is worn here, the carpet showing where nearly thirty years of people have trod.

I swipe a can of Pepsi from the case in the food area, even though I’m trying to quit pop again. I can’t handle caffeine, it makes me too anxious. But the thought of sweet bubbles while I search outweighs my better self. Next, I want a snack. I look in the overflow case, which has a couple of squares in it. Then to the main one for baked goods. It’s Friday, cinnamon roll day, but I’m not in the mood today. They look great, though.

The cafeteria is full of delicious old-fashioned squares and cookies. There are rolls and biscuits. There are trifles and cheesecake. There are molasses cookies, as today’s season cookie option.

I choose a ham and cheese biscuit. I go to the cash and pay, and remember I should tell the cashier that I’m leaving. Marie has served many of my meals, and is almost always on cash when I go to pay. She asks after my former library technician, who left six years ago. She gives me extra bacon at breakfast sometimes or an extra scoop of potatoes. I’ll miss her, and I tell her so, but I still have a week left and I’m going to be back up here before I go.

A Friday many years ago

“And lunch?” my boss asks. Distracted by saving my search results, I nod absently, click several times, and then push back from my desk dramatically. She’s here today to do my performance review, which we’ve covered (I am getting my meagre merit raise as permitted by the government). She went to check her email; and I dove back into my searching.

I lead the way to the cafeteria, going the back way, dodging carts in the hallway, confidently striding through various areas which look like we don’t belong in, but we have permission to go through anyway.

Once my boss has her lunch and I’ve heated my leftovers, we sit at a table near the window. She looks at me as she lifts her fork. “It’s always nice to come up here to see you,” she says, sincerely, “but I’m really so excited to eat lunch here.”

She’s been to all of the cafeterias in the health authority. She tells me this is the best one. We will repeat this scene many times, even though one trip she makes the mistake of ordering a donair, which I think is foolish.

Wednesday

Time for one of my last breakfasts here, I tell myself. I love that I can run upstairs and get a full breakfast on days when I sleep in and am running late, or just don’t feel like making breakfast. While the price of breakfast has crept up with everything else, it’s still one of the best deals for a meal on the river.

Marie is off today, the other workers tell me. Nadya, and another one - she’s new, and I don’t quite catch her name badge. I order a small breakfast: one slice of toast, one bacon or sausage, one egg, and hashbrowns. White, bacon, scrambled, to-go. It rolls off my tongue, this has always been my breakfast order. Once in a while I’ll get a breakfast sandwich, but mostly I like my small breakfast. It comes with your choice of jam. I pick strawberry. Sometimes I’ll get peanut butter, which technically isn’t part of the deal, but Marie never charges me for it.

We laugh as both workers exclaim that the debit machine is acting up today. “It knows!” they tell me. “Marie took the day off, and it doesn’t accept us.”

Tuesday, or maybe Thursday, March 2020

An email is sent to everyone. This is not new, but lately we’ve been receiving nearly hourly updates and changes on COVID protocols, and not a single email has brought any cheer to anyone’s life. We feel paralyzed.

I watched the executive director cry in a meeting of all the leaders at the hospital, because we don’t know what will happen, and we are so, so afraid we’re going to die. But we have to come here, and we have to be ready. As ready as you can be for a novel virus that didn’t exist six months ago and shattered your entire world in a matter of weeks.

The email tells us that a local pizza restaurant wants to give us all lunch, as a show of support. They will deliver enough 9” pizzas for everyone. The email has instructions on who and how to pick up your pizzas for your department, to limit the number of people going. In this building of staff and patients, we are starting to stay away from one another. To be alone while surrounded.

My office neighbours pick up my pizza for me. We are unsure if we can eat together. Are we allowed to sit in the same room, if we keep apart? What are the new rules today? We are tired and confused.

But the pizza is good, and for a moment, we are happy.

A Thursday before Christmas, before the pandemic

The table is positively groaning as we continue to take out item from the boxes on the cart: our Christmas lunch is here and we are about to FEAST.

“Hold on,'“ one of the nurses says, “I need a picture. DON’T EAT YET.”

Immediately, we start whining while she fixes the angle of the group selfie, around the table. We take five pictures until one is declared as perfect.

We’ll use these pictures in a retirement slideshow for one of our own, just another silly day at the lunch table and our fabulous takeout.

A summer Thursday

I’m hardly in the door, sweating, despite the frigid air conditioning of the hospital, when one of the nurses announces we’re going for a walk after we eat, go get your shoes. Sulkily, I drop my lunch bag and run back upstairs for my hikers - not that I’m upset by the prospect of a walk, but more that I’m hangry beyond belief and I need to eat NOW.

We eat and go outside as a cluster. I don’t know the route out of the basement we take as well as they do - everyone else has worked here for at least twenty years and know the ins and outs of the building better than I ever will.

One of us, the admin support, will peel off to go smoke at the water tower - she’s quit quitting again, and we sigh at her, since we know she can do it, but we let her go. The rest of us wander through the apple trees and return to the building, sun-soaked.

“Wait, do I need to sanitize?” the nurse asks. I push my mask onto my sweaty face.

“You didn’t touch anything,” I say.

“No, just your hair,” she says, giving the back of my head an affectionate swipe. My hair is glossy today, with a final attempt with this hairstyle to act like straightening it isn’t torture. I think about the last time we were so free with one another, pre-pandemic. This was the first time someone touched me at work, and while I’m not big on touching in general, I’m surprised how it nourishes me.

The final Friday

“Lunch tomorrow is at 12:30, don’t be late,” one of the nurse educators tells me, severely, on Thursday. The phone rings and she scurries to pick it up. Then": “it’s at noon, actually!” She sends me a message Friday morning, first thing, though I know she should be prepping for her Basic Life Support class: “Good morning! Happy last day! Lunch is at 12!”

How strange to think I’ll never trot my way downstairs, after my little reminder to go eat lunch at noon pops up on my second monitor. That I’ll never sit at my spot again, a chair I once took by default the first time I was invited to eat with my regular lunch crowd, but remained mine for several years. How strange I won’t be there to eat the next cake, or yelp when we blow a fuse again (from someone not realizing the kettle is on and turning on the microwave). The faces have changed from the original cluster, people coming and going, but now that it’s my face leaving, I’m bereft in a way I haven’t been before.

This is the table I sat at all through COVID. The table I ate endless cakes at. The table we vented around and celebrated around, the table we compared notes at, attended meetings together, welcomed visitors, exchanged gifts, ate lunch every day, together.

I sweep in on my last day, after my colleagues in Employee Health serve me a mid-morning tea break - I hardly ate breakfast today in anticipation of all the food that will be about in my honour, which still seems so funny to me. I do not leave places or get meals of honour. I’m doing both of those things today.

They have set the table with tablecloth and settings. A cake, covered, sits in the middle of the table. A cart, next to the table, is covered in presents for me. I let myself be overcome for a few minutes.

This last lunch runs nearly two hours. We eat our combos from the Chinese place, we tell stories and gossip about our community, I get a little teary as they watch me open my gifts.

How do you say good-bye? I hug people and promise to message from my new home, we’ll see each other on Facebook and surely I’ll come back for a visit sometime, perhaps in the summer? A summer? I take a deep breath and push away from the table for the last time. This room has held me as I grew up some more. I can move forward with its friendship and lessons.

The cake my lunchmates got me for my last day.