Cereal with Milk
Natalie asked for a little milk in her cereal yesterday (Cheerios, of course). She got the idea from the box…which she has seen a thousand times before but for some reason today decided to pay attention and copy it. So I gave her some milk in her cereal (lactaid, actually because she is sensitive to lactose). Then, a few minutes later, Mike comes down the stairs and into the kitchen and Natalie says to him, “Daddy, I like milk in my cereal”. At first it doesn’t register…the magnitude of this statement... because that’s the way normal people eat their cereal, until he realizes that this is the FIRST time she has had milk in her cereal. Yes, more than three years of dry cereal. And, he smiles, and says, “Yes, that’s the preferred way", and shoots me a sideways glance.
A little background and reminiscing….
When I was a kid, my parents and my brother and I would drive about 1,200 miles each summer to Canada to visit family. I was car sick and uncomfortable and always forced to sit in the back with the luggage because I was the one with the “short legs”. I tease my parents about this from time to time, claiming that I would have been 6’ 2” if only I hadn’t been forced to sit in the back with the luggage (my mom is 5’ 11”, my dad and brother both over 6 feet.) I do so just to joke with them, of course, because the trips to Nova Scotia as a kid, were certainly my most fond memories of childhood: card games and card parties with the best homemade desserts, dory boats and fresh scallops, cold Atlantic water at the beach and the “Turkey Burger”, even my great uncles’ missing fingers (they were all fishermen) and clam calls, and of course the big coolers and bicycles that we always hauled with us. I want to make clear that I harbor no ill will towards my parents and love them dearly for taking us to Canada every summer. But, packing the cooler is the part of the story that’s relevant to the morning breakfast tale above.
Breakfast on the road went something like this: My parents, in their efforts to save some money and time in the morning after a motel stay in say, Massachusetts, or Maine, or in the event we slept on the side of the road in a rest area, they always packed individually wrapped cereal boxes and a container of milk in the cooler. Despite their best efforts to restock the cooler with fresh ice along the way, the milk was always a little bit scary after the second or third day on the road. So, now, I also tease my parents, in addition to the height thing, that the reason I don’t have milk in my cereal is that I can still taste the cool and not cold milk soaking into the flakes of some cereal I begrudgingly ate because individually wrapped Lucky Charms didn’t exist. But, most of all, I can still taste the Styrofoam bowl the whole meal was served in and, of course; you always had to drink the milk that was left over in the bowl, floating bits of fragmented cereal and all. No wasting milk! Maybe this is the root of why I eat my cereal dry to this day, maybe not. I like tell my parents a lot of funny tales about our trips to Canada, just to give them a hard time and make them laugh, because they too remember all too well these events and crack up in hysterics when I recount my road trip memories.
I asked Natalie after her first milk with cereal, if she preferred milk in her cereal, her cereal plain, or liked both. She, usually very diplomatic, said that she, “Like the milk, Mommy.” But, sweet as she can be, she sensed that we were in a rush this morning and said, without any prompt, “I’ll have it plain, Mommy.” She doesn’t eat it dry for any particular reason except that’s the way I have eaten it for years, just because I prefer it that way. The whole world is rejoicing that her world has opened up to new possibilities. This is just the latest in a string of these in the past month…the last one was syrup on pancakes…thanks to grandma and daddy…mommy doesn’t like syrup… on anything.
