Cream

Groggy eyed with an early-morning temper, I trudged down the stairs,

plodded past the kitchen

and found my way into the dining room

where I took a seat at a cold, hard-backed chair.

 

I wanted nothing to do with the day.

 

In front of me, you placed a clean, white napkin that nestled a single silver spoon,

and, just slightly in front and to the left of this display, you positioned a tall glass filled to the top with chilled milk.  (This was before you learned that for the next ten years I would only have the time to finish maybe half of the milk before racing off to school.)

 

You moved from the dining room table to the kitchen counter

and then back to the table

returning with a blue and white Delft bowl

brimming with a meticulous mixture of cocoa pebbles and cheerios.

 

I automatically grabbed the spoon like some sort of cereal-consuming machine and shoveled a heaping pile onto the silver cradle and began to gobble down the breakfast like a starving child that hadn’t eaten in days, weeks, maybe years; a child whose only hope for survival was TO DEVOUR AS MUCH CEREAL AS POSSIBLE IN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS…

 

I stopped mid-bite.

 

There was something different about my cereal. Something that made it so delicious that I actually took the time to taste it

and think.

 

 

 

 

It was the milk.  It was heavier and smoother than usual and it took its time flowing across my tongue.  This wasn’t just regular milk that escorted my cereal from the bowl to the spoon to my mouth

 

It was cream.

 

Not just in the bowl but…yes... in the glass, as well!

 

My smile stretched from ear to ear,

and, if I remember correctly, you smiled, too, as you walked back into the kitchen to finish crafting and packing my lunch for the day.

 

There is nothing in the world that has ever tasted so memorable as that early-morning surprise.

 

When I think back to this moment, I wonder how you felt putting cream in my cereal and in my glass.  I wonder if it would have hurt if I did not notice or if I noticed but I did not care.  And I wonder how many other small things and big things you did but I missed or I recognized but never emphasized how much they meant to me. And I wonder if you even remember the day you put cream in my cereal

or if my ingratitude turned your surprise into a wayside fallen memory.

 

So today, I want to tell you two things:

1.)   When I have children, I will surprise them with cream in their cereal.

2.)   Thank you.

 

Thank you for this act of love.

Thank you

for this

and so much more.  

Reviews

[Eagle Cruagh]

Incredible !
This grabbed the reader in the beginning ,
held him to the page and finished with a
whopping moral, a solution to the question
and you made me like it.
Thank you for an ultimate experience.
----- Eagle Cruagh

[Ben Taylor]

Firstly, I read a lot of writers' material on here, and I could tell within the first sentence that you were talented and not one of the many mediocre poets that call this site home. The phrases you use: "Groggy eyed with an early-morning temper", "napkin that nestled a single silver spoon", and so on, give this story (for I think it is more of a story than a poem) its flair.
I usually find any sort of apologies or thank-yous to be rather tiresome and banal, but with this you kept my attention, and I honestly felt moved at the end. Well written Lindsay.