What did you want as a child (that you never got)?

I know there are many children around the globe who lack for basic necessities - clean water, food, medical care, housing. There are kids who'd give everything for an education or love. Safety. It seems ridiculous, as a middle class American, to even ponder this question. But having spent many years in therapy, as well as contemplating Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs", has made me realize the truth of Tolstoy's famous dictum:"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Sometimes it's not the thing itself, but what that thing represents.

                                        Ever notice how this pyramid lines up with the chakras ?

When I was in elementary school, one of my best girlfriends had a mother who worked (rare in the 1960's) and a nanny/cook at home who packed her lunches. She had what seemed to me at the time the most incredible lunchbox meals, such as a thermos of tomato soup, a ham and cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit, a small carton of milk, and goldfish crackers. My other best girlfriend's mom was a stay at home mom who gave her a dollar a day to buy her lunch, and back then, the food at our school cafeteria was like eating at Luby's. We had Meatloaf  Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, Chicken Fried Steak Wednesdays, Fried Chicken or Corndog Thursdays, and Fish Stick Fridays. Each meal came with 2 kinds of veggies, plus mashed potatoes and gravy, and a fresh baked roll. You could get a small carton of milk or an iced tea and an ice cream with this meal and still have some of that dollar left over. Oh how I wanted to eat either of those lunches! I can still remember the smell of my grade school cafeteria. The lunchroom ladies baked those fresh rolls every morning, and the smell of them baking wafted through the entire school, making everyone hungry.

What did I get for lunch? My father was an attorney, my mom was a stay at home mom and we lived in a custom built home in an upscale neighborhood. Had three cars and an RV. Both of my parents were mentally ill, however, and they had their good days and their bad days. In the early years, they packed my lunch for me; later, I packed my own, but I was hampered by what my mom bought and stocked the pantry with. Sometimes I got a bologna sandwich or a peanut butter sandwich. Sometimes not. Sometimes it was a piece of bread spread with butter and sugar. No matter what, though, I got a full-sized candy bar. Always either a Baby Ruth or a Butter-finger. My mom kept cases of those things in the pantry at home at all times, along with dozens of large returnable glass bottles of coca-cola, and very little else. Sometimes I got a candy bar for lunch and nothing else. Now you'd think most little kids would be pretty excited about this, but I was a growing child, physically active, and hungry all the time. The candy bars just weren't filling me up. Also, after several years of this - I spent a lot of time trading these candy bars for lunch items other kids had but didn't want - an apple, celery sticks and peanut butter, cheese and crackers, nuts, a banana- really, it was a great way to try new stuff I'd never had before - the other kids got tired of just these two candy bar flavors and stopped trading. I was stuck.

This situation was symptomatic of an over-arching issue of my childhood - I was hungry all the time. My mom didn't like to shop, cook, or even leave the house. She started sending me to the grocery store when I was 5 or 6 - I rode my bike a few blocks, clutching rumpled dollar bills in my hand - bought what she told me to buy, and brought it home in my bicycle basket. Most of the time, I was instructed to buy cut up chicken parts, coca-cola, and candy bars. Once in a awhile it was a can of coffee, a loaf of bread, or a carton of half and half. The list varied little in all the early years of my life. When my parents divorced ( I was 19 years old and in college) one of the barbs my dad slung at my mother was that he "was tired of eating nothing but chicken every d@mn single day".

Throughout my childhood, I was small and thin, at the bottom of the growth curves. Tiny for my age - always on the front row of school pictures (they lined us up by size). I often fell asleep at school in the afternoons (probably bc the sugar rush had faded by then) which my mom said was the reason she held me back in kindergarten for a year, because I was so small and still needed a nap every day. It never occurred to her that eating a diet of sugar toast for breakfast, and a candy bar for lunch might be part of the problem. Teachers chided me routinely for the sleeping, even though I made good grades. I was the kid who hung around after school, playing at everyone else's home at mealtime, hoping to be invited to stay for dinner, and scrounge off other family's meals. I loved eating things at other peoples homes : spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, pork chops, mac n cheese, hamburger helper, corn, hotdogs, baked potatoes, pepper steak, la choi chinese food from a can, fried chicken, hamburgers, tuna casserole. 1960's kid food. As soon as I turned 16, I went out and got myself a job (my parents had gotten me my drivers' license early, so I could drive my little sister around - again, bc my mom didn't want to leave the house), and I started eating out every single day. I lied about my work hours, left 30 min early, and grabbed a meal at some place en route.

A childhood spent hungry leaves you hungry for the rest of your life. Whether the hunger is for food, or attention, or love, it can never be fully abated. Naturally, I struggle with weight issues today because I can never feel not hungry.