There’s Only So Much You Can Say About Cereal
There’s Only So Much You Can Say About Cereal
A War-torn Cereal Breakfast
I don’t cherish breakfast. This is not to say I don’t eat. Quite the contrary. But rarely have I ever put much thought into it. For my first 20 years, I ate Cheerios. Maybe one bowl, maybe two, always with milk. There was some effort to find the right spoon, a bit of thought given to oat cereal/liquid ratio, and an idea bout the curve of a good bowl, perhaps. But that was it. In my late teens/early 20s, I suppose I had a spell of caring quite passionately about $1.99 specials, especially if the restaurant would let us smoke and throw in a free donut (Donut’s Luncheonette in Park Slope) or if they had pitchers of Miller High Life for $3 (Loui’s in Providence.) But as I got older, all I really cared about was nutrition, repetition, ease, let’s get on with the day.
Then, five years ago, living in Saudi Arabia, we had a daughter. The baby would drink milk and I’d make coffee for my wife and then I’d dish out whatever very basic bowl of breakfast was on hand: Oats, bran, whatever I could find at the bizarre groceries in Riyadh, where a cabbage imported from France could cost $30 and there was always a sly aisle full of sugar and juice, for expat home brew. The days went on. Until my wife moved to Baghdad and I moved with our daughter to Turkey. Suddenly, I found myself making coffee for one.
So it was that I spent week after week caring for a tiny human, while my wife became a war correspondent. Sure, I was proud of Kelly and the things her work brought us: a pad in Istanbul, views of the seven holy mosques, an enviable liquor cabinet. But I found the cognitive and empathetic powers of our toddler an insufficient match for the feelings (of regret, confusion, shame, fear) I was more or less always feeling. Each morning, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and gazed at my daughter. I thought about Baghdad. I didn’t think much about breakfast.
Then, all of a sudden, the little girl was grown and ready for pre-school. I found a groovy little German-language facility in Sisli, a tiny district just a short train ride from our place on Galip Dede Cadessi. They provided meals for the kids, and we needed to hustle to make it for opening bell. No time for cereal, I remember that first morning, having dropped her off, wandering down the road in disbelief, hungry, my hands still curled around a stroller I’d left at the school, my mind still locked on a person in Baghdad.
Alone on Cumhuriyet Cadessi, I found a light-filled cafe. There was a corner table. I sat down and ordered a plate of eggs, a selection of pastries, a tureen of olives, hot strong tea, and several shards of a sausage called Sucuk. It was delicious, and unfamiliar. Maybe this is why people go to brunch? I went alone every morning for months, writing hundreds of pages. Then we all moved together to Beirut, where my wife would cover Syria, and as old worries were replaced by new—rockets in the mountains, gunfire in the valleys—I also had less time to myself and no reason to eat some fancy breakfast. Best as I could, when Kelly was home, I made coffee for two. There’s only so much you can say about the comfort of a bowl of cereal.