The Lunch-Box Chronicles: Notes from the Parenting Underground - Hardcover

Winik, Marion

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375401563 ISBN 13: 9780375401565

Publisher: Pantheon, 1998

Synopsis

"For me, parenting is like dieting.  Every day, I wake up filled with resolve and good intentions, perfection in view, and every day I somehow stray from the path.  The difference is with dieting, I usually make it to lunch. . . ."

With the open and often hilarious voice we have come to expect from Marion Winik, here is a refreshing, insightful journey that takes us through the mishaps and serendipity, tumult and quiet, that make up daily life in raising a family.  
        When Winik's husband died in 1994, she was left not only with her grief, but also with the care of her two sons and with the task of rebuilding all their lives. Part memoir, part survival guide, The Lunch-Box Chronicles is a wholly engaging revelation of the philosophy of parenting that grew out of her experience, where boys (ages seven and nine) will be the boys they are, and a "good-enough mom" is actually good enough.
        Taking us from the morning scramble to get the boys off to school to the good-night kisses when (at last!) they are asleep, Winik takes on the difficult subjects of everyday life, from sex and drugs to what to make for dinner, all with
affection and insight, but with her laser-sharp humor and sense of irony firmly in place.  

About this title

About the Author

Marion Winik has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered since 1991.  Her writing has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including Redbook, Harper's Bazaar, and Parenting.  The author of Telling and First Comes Love (both available from Vintage Books), she lives with her two sons in Austin, Texas.

From the Back Cover

"If you have a hip and smart-mouthed kid, sit down and read aloud from The Lunch-Box Chronicles. Look up every five minutes and repeat, 'This is the truth.' You will both be better people for it."
--Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

"The Lunch-Box Chronicles is about as real as it gets. At once hilarious and wrenching, it's about being a parent, but it's also about so much more: love, survival, transcendence--and macaroni and cheese."
--Anne Lamott, author of Operating Instructions

"Reads like an intimate chat between good friends. Marion Winik doesn't just tell you about her life with her kids, she makes you a part of what's happening to her and to them. This is a mother who seems to take the good with the bad, and to make the best of trying situations. What a strong woman, what a wonderful book!"
--Esmeralda Santiago, author of When I Was Puerto Rican

"Honest, compassionate, funny, and true. Whether employing her zany wit or astute powers of observation, Winik delivers goose bumps of recognition in every chapter."
--Mary Kay Blakely, author of American Mom

From the Inside Flap

, parenting is like dieting. Every day, I wake up filled with resolve and good intentions, perfection in view, and every day I somehow stray from the path. The difference is with dieting, I usually make it to lunch. . . ."

With the open and often hilarious voice we have come to expect from Marion Winik, here is a refreshing, insightful journey that takes us through the mishaps and serendipity, tumult and quiet, that make up daily life in raising a family.
When Winik's husband died in 1994, she was left not only with her grief, but also with the care of her two sons and with the task of rebuilding all their lives. Part memoir, part survival guide, The Lunch-Box Chronicles is a wholly engaging revelation of the philosophy of parenting that grew out of her experience, where boys (ages seven and nine) will be the boys they are, and a "good-enough mom" is actually good enough.<

Reviews

Dispatches from the parenting front line--pungent and funny and spot-on--from Winik. When her husband died from AIDS three years back (a story she related in First Comes Love, 1996), Winik found herself a dumbstruck single mother of two young boys: ``My life stretched before me like a hard labor sentence.'' Every tuck-in, wake-up, drop-off, and drive home, every mess to be cleaned and each tear to be wiped away was hers alone. Here she tells of her efforts to do her best by her kids, and that she does: She tells of scrabbling to make a living while still making sure to volunteer at school (her mental bumper sticker for her kids' school is ``Bryker Woods Elementary--Where Parental Involvement Is a Sickness''), along the way offering such advice as ``deliver the store-bought muffins to the bake sale with your chin held high.'' She paws over the strange and confusing terrain of nudity around the home, reading the same miserable (and once dearly loved) book a million times, finding pleasure in the heretofore abhorred world of sports (``a soccer mom, a Cowboys fan, and a frigging golfer''), of her role as stepmother to her boyfriend's two girls, of contending honestly with the questions of sex and drugs (she herself having long, involved histories therein of defiance and risk-taking, and being anarchically bent still), and--a wicked, indelible moment--a slap she administers to her younger son. She delineates a life of quicksilver emotions, from bathetic to eulogistic in the blink of an eye, and avoids sentimentality at all costs: ``Girls are bitches, boys are assholes,'' she notes, though not without affection. Winik fires from the hip, and if her observations are never blazingly original, they are always heartfelt. She's a mother, a loving mother, a good mother. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Columnist and NPR commentator Winik wrote about her unusual marriage in First Comes Love (1996). After her husband Tony's death from AIDS, she was left alone to parent their two young sons, and this painfully honest, frequently funny collection of essays is based on her experiences. It is loosely arranged to follow Winik's routine from the morning scramble to get her boys off to school to her fainthearted attempts to get some work done to her children's bedtime rituals; she also manages to address blended families, her past major walk on the wild side and how much of that she should communicate to her sons, holidays from hell, and other topics close to a mother's heart. This book is better sampled than read straight through, for some readers might feel that some of this material would interest only members of Winik's immediate family. But at her best, such as in "Bad Mommy Days," Winik brings together in winning fashion her decidedly nonmainstream attitude, laugh-out-loud humor, and refreshing candor. Joanne Wilkinson

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375401563
• ISBN 13: 9780375401565
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 229