Hope Fueled by Free School Lunch

My kids got free lunches. Breakfasts, too, for a while. I remember that it was remarkably free of red tape. I filled out a form, signed my name, they got fed.

It was a time in my life when I was briefly unemployed and then employed at a low wage. There were bills to pay that piled up while I was unemployed, a divorce, a new job. It wasn’t an easy time but it was eased for us by the school lunch program, and no one went hungry.

I don’t think any child deserves to be hungry. Even when parents make mistakes (and I did), children should not have to pay by starving. In the end, we all pay and it costs a lot more than lunch.

A little support can lift us, draw wind into flat and empty sails and allow movement to resume. A full tummy can keep a flicker of hope and trust alive in a child and soften the meanness that grows from emptiness. I knew my boys were fed and I could put dinner on the table, and from that point on our lives climbed uphill. Soon I got a better job and we didn’t need the program very long.

Most welfare families are assisted less than two years. This is well documented. Like me, most are non-minority European Americans. Not that it matters. I think this is a very, very important time for Americans to consider what it means to live with such abundance, where democracy itself permits grave errors of legislative judgment. We need to resist the seduction of simplistic rhetoric and easy targets.

If this is about deficit reduction and welfare reform, then it’s time to talk about corporate welfare, fat-cat welfare, white-collar welfare and tax write-offs for big farmers. Let’s talk about the housing subsidies that benefit wealthy homeowners and far exceed housing help for those who can never hope to own their homes. Or maybe the deficit isn’t the issue. Could it be that having a group to pick on and winning votes are the real issues?

Federal nutrition programs work. Can we really afford to tinker with the minds and the bodies of our most precious, most vulnerable, most costly resource? If a few kids get fed who don’t need it, is that so bad? It’s not like they’re trading lunch for drugs. It’s small potatoes.

SUSAN IMAI PYBURN

Oxnard