Cereal, to the tune of my clacking fingers reminded me, this morning, about the *places* I once ate variations of it.

The earliest memory is at the kitchen table of my parent's first home in Cleveland Heights. The table was octagonal, the chairs with wheels once dumping my sister down the basement steps;a small kitchen is all I've ever known. The house was a large yellow colonial with more cumbersome than roomy rooms--seemingly large in order to fit the giant moldings of the time ... closets, of course, quite small. We played in the rain that the sewers backed up, we feared loud motorcycles and thunder, we watched a dog get hit by a car, we had to tinkle when hiding 'n seeking, we watched Big Chuck and Little John's movie selections, Barnaby, Sesame Street, and Dad's choice of scary movies on the weekends when the folks grew too tired to put us to bed on time. We got soap in our mouths, learned how to use the potty, saw our dad's wiener, brought home frogs, suffered through chicken pox and the wooden spoon, and never, never saw our parents not get along. The cereal I remember is no longer available nor can I retrieve the name of it. The box had what I thought was a mailman on it, and the cereal was a mildly sweet brick/pez-shaped shape. I can still taste it. Another cereal Mom fed us was Cream of Wheat with butter and sugar. I never liked the butter. Still don't. As we got a little older, second-grade or so, we, on Saturdays, got our own cereal and ate it in front of the TV. In fact, I don't remember a parent around those mornings. I imagine now that they must have been sleeping. The Smurfs, which were on for an eternity Saturday mornings, supplied the entertainment while we ate at least two bowls of Corn Flakes or maybe Boo Berry if we were lucky. Everything felt lucky back then.

As a kid, I visited my aunt and cousins in New Jersey. I remember food was a big deal there, for me anyway. It may have helped with the homesickness I ate to avoid feeling. I was turned on to Kix and Life. And blueberries. My uncle, who worked for NASA and was hardly ever there, grossed us out by eating cereal with orange juice instead of milk. My cousin and I would walk to the deli--it was a rural town with horse farms, a post office, and a deli--for philly cheese steaks. I ate an entire one inside the cement pipe at the playground. My cousin, a boy, couldn't believe it. Later in my visit my aunt looked at me funny when I wanted another bagel after having just eaten one.

On to my parent's second house, them now divorced, and me a high school graduate working four nights at the pizzeria and daily watching my sister's first child. It was a struggle for me. I was young, with vices that troubled me: smoking and eating, and anxiety about the future I didn't feel a part of; I had dropped out of college because life, low on funds and left to my own devices, was rough. My dad didn't talk to me for no reason. My mom talked to me too much. She shared her troubles but didn't know I felt them. The world was imploding in on me. Some peace was present in the mornings during my niece's nap. I'd sit on the front steps with yogurt and Cheerios, either enjoying nature, or doing so while reading or trying to complete the crossword puzzle of the day; I read the paper from cover to cover then, favoring the obituaries. I was so vulnerable that it devastated me when the paper picked up a different crossword and stopped running the other one, the one that taught me aria. Depressed about being 20ish, in a bad relationship, and feeling a general malaise I couldn't understand, I quit babysitting, quit my job, didn't leave the house for a year and a half, and stopped eating breakfast. It was the first time in my life I was skinny though. I had used the religious teachings from a class at Kent State, plus the Catholicism I grew up with to let Jesus help me. He did. Oh yeah, my only motivation to venture out was to buy cigarettes. I began walking after several months of not paying my car loan, however. I was paranoid about driving the car. Funny how I never thought about not having the money for smokes back then. I'm sure my mom helped keep me smoking.

I eat breakfast now (and quit smoking eight years ago). I still enjoy Cheerios. And blueberries. I eat mostly at Journalscape. And I wonder about the world according to my kids over their bowls of cereal, and I hope they always feel lucky.