Sunday May 10th, 2015

The exercise:

Write about: all that remains.

Lazed around the house with my family this morning. We took Max to the park in the afternoon. Enjoyed a tasty Mother's Day dinner of slow-cooked short ribs.

It was a good day. Pretty sure Kat enjoyed it as well.

Mine:

Dad always had the same thing for cereal every day. The only exceptions that I can remember are the mornings when Mom made pancakes for the whole family. Of course Dad joined in - he was a big part of that whole family deal we had going on - but on more than a few of those occasions I caught him looking longingly at the cereal cupboard.

It was the same cereal each morning, otherwise, with his usual additions. A handful of raisins, a smaller handful of cashews, and an exact number of almonds. Dad was not a superstitious man, but he refused to add 13 almonds to his bowl - it had to be 12 or 14 or, if he was staring down a big day, 15.

Never 13.

I remember a couple of times when there were 13 nuts left in the bag. Dad would count out 12, look at the remaining almond, and pop it in his mouth.

"What's the difference?" I would ask.

"I guess there isn't any, really," he'd reply with an embarrassed shrug.

He knew he was being silly. That didn't stop him from doing it though.

Dad ate his breakfast carefully, always making sure that each spoonful of cereal contained at least one raisin or cashew or precious almond. But not too many! After all, he didn't want to be left staring down at a bowl that held the remains of only a few bits of cereal.

And milk, of course.

But then, the milk mattered about as much to him as the cereal did.