Just now, I'm watching my husband carefully add some raisins to his oatmeal. He has two bowls lined up on the counter and is emulating the style of the cooks on TV: everything he needs to make breakfast (carton of milk, currants, raisins) taken out of their homes and neatly lined up like little soldiers reporting for duty. He inquires if I want raisins in my oatmeal, or currants, or both.
It brought back a vivid memory of my grandmother who used to put out every cereal box we had on the kitchen table, with two bowls for my brother and me, and two spoons, and two different kinds of milk (whole milk and Lactaid for herself). This used to delight me to no end when I was a kid. Cereal buffet! Grandma has put out all the boxes! Maybe I will mix two different kinds together this morning; my mother never facilitated such options for me at breakfast.
Then she would start cutting up the fruit like a hundred people were coming over. Apples, pears, strawberries.
"Here," she'd say. "Eat this. Have some peach."
"No, grandma," I'd say. "I'm good with this cereal."
She would grow irate: "I cut up all this fruit for you!"
I can see her hands so clearly: small and white, the bright diced peach resting between her index finger and her thumb.
On mornings like this, when I committed to baking a birthday cake, or when I committed to doing anything domestic, I miss her; I miss grandmothers in general, how they always had kleenex, how they sat next to me in church and kept me quiet with sugar free candy, how they baby-sat me when my parents went out to dinner on those wintery nights when ordinarily I might have been afraid.
oh my god i remember this.so cute
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