I was driving to work this morning
Eating oatmeal.
I do this all the time, inexplicably,
Even if I have enough time to sit at the table and eat.
On some unconscious level, I’d rather balance the white corningware
In the passenger seat, a partner in the morning’s commute.
Today I had filled the bowl with raisins and chia seeds.
Merging, I bit into a raisin.
Isn’t it funny how memory works?
Almost instantly, you can be transported. And I was,
Back to when I was a child,
Eating cream-of-wheat on the table my parents bought after their wedding.
(The table still faithfully serves in the kitchen–
Warm teak with attachments that slide easily/ gladly for unexpected guests).
I remember, for some reason, that there were exactly ten raisins in my cereal that morning.
(The memory was equally surprising to me when I rediscovered it).
I remember pretending that they were fish
And that I was a whale
And whale-me was fishing for these ten fish
In the singular ocean-bowl of cream-of-wheat.
And that is it. The extent of the memory.
Me and a bowl and my parents’ table and ten fishy raisins one morning when I was small.
I can also recall my mother’s presence in the kitchen too though, undoubtedly making breakfast.
“Life goes fast,” she has always said.
And how long ago it seems that I was a whale at a teak table;
But adult-me, at least, remembered.
I smiled as I finished today’s sun-sweetened fruit
A burst of flavored memories on an otherwise grey morning.
