Dad's Cereal

My daughter found a hat in one of the boxes collecting dust underneath my bed yesterday. Out of boredom, she had asked me if she could “investigate” the contents of this unknown space, a place in the house that she had not yet explored. If it had been December, I would have quickly said no, frightened by the possibility that the truth of Santa’s workshop would be revealed at too early an age. But in the middle of fall, the thought of purchasing presents and stowing them away felt distant and hidden. I had been busy with other things, perhaps talking to my uncle on the phone for too long, or scrolling undecidedly through expensive floral arrangements online, or writing the longest paragraph a person will ever write. Whatever it was, I’d needed her to be entertained. So, without much consideration, I said yes.

“As long as you put everything back when you’re done,” I added my default condition, to which she agreed to cheerfully.

It wasn’t until this morning that I’d discovered exactly what she had found, and that she had not put everything back. I was rushing from the bedroom into the kitchen, one-handedly shoving earrings into an earlobe while returning my coffee mug to the sink, when I noticed a familiar hat on her head. It wasn’t the usual baseball cap or beanie that her father and I left lying around the house. This was different, made of wool felt and aged several decades, but I’d recognized it instantly.

The beret was much too large for my daughter’s head. It slumped over her eyes, leaving just the brim of her nose and her lips visible. Her dark brown hair hung flatly from the gaping sides of the hat, making her head look much smaller. She sat there beneath the shade of her umbrella, chewing loudly and reading the back of a cereal box, wildly unaware that I had stopped to stare at her obscure appearance.

Maybe if she had been a child who had shown interest in wearing things like hats or bows or headbands on her head, I would have continued walking by without a second thought. Maybe I wouldn’t even have noticed the aged, grey lump that covered her like a queen’s crown atop a princess’s head. But then again, it had been so long since I had seen the frumpy cap, and I had only ever seen one other person in the world wearing it.

I’m about to release a breathy laugh – she really does look a little ridiculous in it, even if it is adorable – when I hone in on the front of the cereal box she has in her hand. She’s tilting it towards me as her eyes trail lower down the back. She must hear my breath catch, a whisper of a gasp, because it is then she finally notices me.

Whether she is confused by whatever facial expression I have on, or she really thinks there’s nothing novel about her wearing a hat on her head, I’m not sure. In her newly evolved five-year-old-turned-teenager voice, she says, “What?”

But my mind is on a journey. It is seeking something it hasn’t had to retrieve in years, swimming through a host of blurry, watered-down memories.

Through distant eyes, I manage: “Where did you get that cereal box from?” I know I had not purchased it, had not thought about the cereal in years. And surely, she hadn’t learned to take herself to the store, though she had witnessed me on more than one occasion order from Instacart online. I had more faith in her technological capabilities than her machine operating ones, but why that cereal?

“Dad went grocery shopping this week, remember?” She says plainly. “It was in the pantry.”

The week of days before now cartwheel through my mind like muted tumbleweeds: the relief I felt when Grant agreed to take care of groceries and meals and laundry while I managed other things; then, the realization that it was he who brought the cereal into the house. In a flash, I remember long ago sharing the story with him and consider his compassionate intentions.

My daughter continues chewing beneath the brim of the beret, and I can hear the loud crunching of almond clusters defeated by her molars. It is that sound coupled with that hat that take me back to my mother’s table. The oilcloth covering the table is decorated with roosters, and at the center, there are rooster-shaped salt and pepper shakers and a pile of paper napkins. At the end of the table, my father sits with his book and bowl, a cereal box standing off to the side. Morning light pools in from the bay window, and I rub my eyes, groaning the way sleepy toddlers groan.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” my father cheers. His smile is welcoming, wide and genuine. It’s my favorite thing to wake up to. That, and –

“Want some breakfast?” My father shakes the box in my direction, wiggling his eyebrows to the rhythm of his offer.

When I nod, he jumps from his seat and grabs me a bowl from the cabinets that are too high for me to reach. I choose a seat next to my father’s and watch as the flakes and nuts and oat clusters leave the box like a waterfall into my bowl. As he pours the milk, he tells me to say “when” once he’s poured enough, and I do. I hear the clink of my spoon as it settles against my ceramic bowl.

“Dad?” I ask.

“Hmmm?” He puts a finger on a word in his book and looks up at me.

“Why do we call this “Dad’s Cereal’?” I’m getting better at reading, and there is no word on this cereal box that says “dad.”

My father chuckles, beaming at me. “Well, darling, it’s because this is my favorite cereal.”

I still hear my father’s ghastly laugh echoing in the distance, and for a brief moment, I wonder if my daughter can hear her grandfather as clearly as I do. As sonorous as his laugh was for me as a child, it seems impossible that she could be deaf to it. But when I regain my focus on her, her expressionless face tells me she is not caught between past and present, as I am now. She just looks at me quizzically and says, “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Before the hat, before the cereal, we were running late. I would have been running around the house, room to room, forgetting something here, grabbing something there. I would have been nagging her to hurry up and get ready to leave. I still have to fix my hair, put on make-up, make her lunch, and the list goes on, knowing it won’t end once she’s at school. There’s so much to do before my father’s memorial service in two days. It would be easy to tell my daughter to eat quickly, to take off that hat and put on her school clothes, to rush through this moment so another could take its place.

“Mind if I have a bowl with you?” I jerk my head towards the box.

Aloof to my intentions, my daughter just shrugs, “Sure,” and continues scanning the back of the box. 

When I join her at the table with my bowl, my senses are heightened: the sounds of the cereal and milk mixing together are crisp; the comfortable silence of two people sitting peacefully at the table is soft. It’s all too familiar and yet, it feels foreign, distant, and hazy. All the mundane movements seem to slow down as past and present collide, blending into whatever this moment is.

Lifting the spoonful to my mouth, I catch sight of the figure next to me wearing a grey beret. And for a brief, fleeting second, there we are, a little girl and her father eating their favorite cereal before school.