Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a good food. It is warm and soothing in the belly. I am sitting in the kitchen floor with a bowl of the maple and brown sugar kind, feeding it to my grandson. He has the cabinet open. The mixing bowls have been pulled out and he is nesting and un-nesting them. After each rotation of movements, he turns toward me and opens his mouth so that I may spoon in another bite. He is busily content with the monotony of this moment, as am I. He is a beautful child. Eyes that seem to be staying hazel and golden hair which is smooth in the morning, but as the day goes on springs into tiny curls. Some days I cannot stop staring at him, at his preciousness and his relationship to me.

Now he has found the skillets, three stacked together, and the process continues. Stack. Bite. Unstack. Bite. Then the bowl is empty and the spell is broken. He stands up and totters over to his favorite window, the one he can see out of in the kitchen. He shrieks greetings to the tree and the birds. He knows this place, this house his mother never lived in.