My father packed my lunch after Mum left

Dear Delyara, My mother moved out three months ago. My parents tell me it is temporary, but Mum has rented an apartment and taken most of her clothes, so I am sixteen, not stupid. Dad has started making my school lunch. Mum used to make beautiful lunchboxes with fruit cut neatly, rice shaped properly, little side dishes. Dad’s are terrible. Yesterday, he gave me rice, two boiled eggs that cracked during cooking, and half a cucumber still wrapped in supermarket plastic. I complained. He apologized so seriously that I felt horrible. This morning, I woke early and saw him watching a video called “easy lunchbox for teenage daughter.” He did not know I was behind him. He paused the video every few seconds and copied everything slowly. At school, I opened the box and found rice, chicken, strawberries and one egg cut into a heart so badly that it looked injured. My friends laughed. I laughed too, but not because I was embarrassed. Dad had put a note underneath: I think the egg went wrong. Eat it anyway. I kept the note. My family is breaking in ways nobody can fix with lunch, but my father woke forty minutes earlier today to learn how to cut an egg into a shape because one person had left and he was trying to cover the missing part without pretending he knew how.