Your Life in a Bowl of Cereal

Everybody loves breakfast cereal.  Talking about it, that is. Folks get a dreamy, faraway look in their eyes like they’re remembering their first kiss.  Or puppy.  Or car. And then they begin rhapsodizing about Alpha Bits or Boo Berry.

            Next time you need a conversation starter, give it a try.  In fact, you can try it out with me right now.  Like this: “What was your favorite brand of cereal growing up?”

            Thanks for asking.  Here’s my entire breakfast cereal dossier.

            Age 6 through 9: In descending order of preference – Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran (Kellogg’s not Post) and Cheerios.  All with enough sugar added to create slimy silvery milk goop.

            Age 10 through 12:  Cap’n Crunch. Multiple refills until the original milk – increasingly thick, grainy and orange – finally disappeared.

            Age 13:  Kix.  Life.  Cocoa Krispies.  Lucky Charms (charms only).

            Age 14: Cap’n Crunch.  Heroin. Relapse.

            Age 15 through 17:  Grape Nuts.  Wheat Chex (normally part of a nutritious breakfast but only as part of a snack mix to accompany soda).

            Age 18 through 21:  Grape Nuts.  Wheat Chex (again, only as part of a snack mix; this time to accompany beer).

            Age 22 through 25:  "Who has time for breakfast?"

            Age 26 through 29:  Honey Nut Cheerios.  For breakfast, for snack, for pre-party hangover-prevention, for after-party midnight snack, for morning-after hangover cure, for…

            Age 30:  Quaker Shredded Wheat

            Age 31 to 49:  Barbara’s Shredded Oats

            Never:   Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Trix, Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, Special K.  Or anything cinnamon-y.  Or apple-y.

            Now:  I stick mostly to oatmeal.  Although (shhh, this is a secret) I recently bought a box of Cap’n Crunch, drove it home, sneaked it into the house, hid it in a cupboard and enjoyed a bowl late at night when nobody was watching.  With vanilla soymilk.  Yum.  

            Then, later:  Yuck.  My teeth hurt.

            What is your favorite cold cereal?

           

So, Kick Back, Dig, While We Do It To You In Your Eardrums*

           His headphones are semi-permanently attached to the sides of his head.  This is funny to me because – back in my “day” – nobody would be caught dead wearing headphones.  Except in the privacy of one’s room or when forced to do so, like in French lab.

            Which may be why despite three years of high school French I can’t speak a word except the entire first dialogue from my first year in Mrs. Liskey’s class:

            Q:  Ou est Philippe?

            A:  Phillipe est a la bibliotheque.  

            Q:  Avec qui?

            A:  Avec Anne.

            But I digress.  At breakfast yesterday I asked my darling old-enough-to-have-a-driver's-license teenager to remove his headphones.  Here’s how the dialogue went:

            Him:  No

            Me:  Why?

            Him:  Because I don’t want to talk.

            Me:  It’s just you and me.  Please can we talk?

            Him:  No.

            Me:  Why?

            Him:  Because I don’t want to talk to you.  I don’t like talking to my parents.  Sometimes I do.  But right now I don’t want to.

            Me:  Well, that’s sort of disturbing.  (Note:  Here I am wondering – as any responsible parent would – if this sort of thing constitutes antisocial behavior that could be a sign of something serious.)

            Him:  What do you mean disturbing? (Note:  He says this while squinting at me as if to say “You don’t really think I’m hoarding weapons and planning an assault on innocent tourists from atop Coit Tower?”)

            Me:  Well, that sort of behavior.  You know, disturbing behavior.

            Him:  You mean typical teenage behavior?  All teenagers do this.  Nobody wants to talk to their parents.  Really.  (Note:  He is shrugging, eye rolling, sighing.  He repositions the headphones so that one earpiece is resting on his hair instead of his ear.  A compromise.)

            Me:  Point taken. 

            Back in my “day” (yes, again, I know) I ignored my parents entirely during my four years of high school (and, come to think of it, for my four years of college and the four years after college, but that’s another tale).

            And what was I doing during those four years of high school?  I was in my love-bead-and-poster-laden room in the basement lying in bed with a pair of headphones on.  Listening to the Rolling Stones, Parliament and Frank Zappa.    If my parents had heard the lyrics to the stuff I was hearing they would certainly have been concerned.  As I’m sure I would be concerned if I could hear the lyrics to the stuff my son is hearing under his headphones now.

            But just because Mick Jagger was singing about hiding speed in his shoe and getting his nose blown didn’t mean I was going to smuggle or use drugs.  Though I certainly fantasized about it.

            And just because George Clinton advocated getting funked up didn’t mean I was seeking an interracial love affair.  Though I would have said yes if anyone had asked, despite the fact that it would have caused quite a stir, given the place and time (the rural South in the early 70s).

            And just because Frank Zappa described a zipless fuck on the floor with a Tarot-throwing rancid-poncho-wearing redhead didn’t mean I was going to dye my hair.  You see, given the place and time, this would have caused a bigger stir than an interracial love affair.

            The things I heard under the headphones revealed to me multiple alternative universes.  Any depraved or wondrous thing I could imagine (or would never have imagined in a million years without my headphones) was possible.

            After I took the posters down and put the headphones aside I made many, many poor choices, but it all worked out.  I’m now a responsible adult with a life full of love and two beautiful nearly-grown children.

            It’ll be interesting to hear what they have to say if and when they’re ready to talk to me.

           **from “P Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)”

Waking

It rained so long

the wall became soft

and the flowers on the wallpaper faded

away, except the big ones

I can see through

the glassy seam:

A wavering aquarium

filled from crying,

clouded by time

To Be Omaha

maybe it’s big enough

maybe not

Sioux Falls a possibility

or I could be off a state or two

looking down from my window seat

lights orange and yellow in the dusk below

clustered like a brooch

pinned on a chiosam dress

grey black botanical fronds on a white background

a wide river piping down the neck thick and satin

doesn’t matter

you were born somewhere down there

can you love a place you’ve never seen?

breath of God blowing off the plains

the sunset days to the west

cold cold grey in winter

beloved because of you

teenager

you see in his face the baby
you held tight like nothing else to hold

you poured in love as from a garden hose
endless and clear

now a scraggly bunch of whiskers
interspersed with the blemishes
the many imperfections
the being human
that so distresses him

leaves you incapable

the spigot turns on,
dams up inside
there’s nothing you can do
there’s nothing you can do

Yellow (red eye taking off from Dulles)

Yowl low

Yowl low

Yowl low

Tiny girl seated behind me

Mouthing it the first time

tangy

stretchy

liquid taffy

Later it'd be sunshine

egg yolk

flower

or lemon

For now

yowling moon sliver

horizon sailing

wee happy boat

on the longest, darkest night

For Dad

I wrote this to be read at my father's "life celebration" service held today, January 29, 2011, in Harrisonburg.  I wasn't able to attend, having been back east for his last days and the private funeral.  I'm including a photo taken about five years ago, of Dad, my son Reilly, husband Paul, son Trigg.  They'd been watching the Blue Angels fly over San Francisco.

You’ve heard a lot about my father today.  Most of which is true and all of which I’m sure he enjoyed hearing.  But it’s my job as his daughter to tell you a few things that didn’t get mentioned.

Before he was “Coach Cummins” he was little Brownie Cummins.  The baby of the family.

He had no memory of his father, who took off when Dad was four.  But his mother Pearl was strong and resilient.

She showered him with tough love while his sister Blanch spoiled him rotten.

To make him stay down for his nap, they would station the vacuum cleaner outside his room.  He was scared to death of the vacuum cleaner.

Blanch said he had the prettiest legs she’d ever seen on a boy.

As a youngster, he liked to go hunting before school.  All by himself before the sun peeked over the ridgetop.

He was a champion marble player and his winnings are buried at the base of fence posts all over Wise County.  Jars and jars full of colored glass, according to Dad’s brother Howard.

Brother Jack sliced Dad with a scythe as they played “jungle” one day and for the rest of his life Dad carried a long and serious scar across the palm of his hand.

Skinny, tall and blond.  With a sweet, shy smile.  That was Brownie the teenager.

He met my mom in high school.  But on what she thought was their first date he walked a different girl home.

The army sent him to San Francisco where he had so much fun he might have been stationed at a country club.  But he didn’t try the crab while he was there.

Back in Virginia he learned to love crab.  By the bushel.  He also liked biscuits, Snickers bars, peanut butter fudge, peanuts, deviled ham, Vienna sausage, donuts, Martin’s barbecue waffle potato chips, and Scotch on the rocks.

 

He refused to watch scary movies.  He’d been traumatized by the original version of “The Blob.”

After retirement, he grew roses and arranged them in vases for my mother.

He left her love notes on post-its, along with shopping lists and reminders to drive carefully.

He thought she was the most beautiful woman on Earth, and frequently quoted a friend of theirs who called her “The Best Looking Broad in Harrisonburg.”

He was a morning person.  He’s the one who made breakfast at our house.  Dad would sing “There she is, Miss America” as Mom dragged herself to the breakfast table.  She was not a morning person.

When I hugged him he smelled of Old Spice and cigars.

I loved watching him use a pocket knife.

He was a Democrat.

He was an expert solitaire player.

He was my husband’s favorite fly-fishing buddy.

He liked to nap in front of the TV, preferably with a football game on.

He was a devoted husband.

He was a steadfast father .

He was a doting Grandfather .

And his whole life long he was truly a kid at heart.

He was the sweetest Brownie ever.

I miss him terribly.