The Cereal Development

My mother is a remarkable person. She is super smart (“almost a genius” in her words). She graduated almost first in her high school class in China. Also, she reads medical articles for fun. She is talented too—I cannot count the amount of times she has begun a sentence with “I used to be truly excellent at x” (insert some field of mathematics, science, or physical prowess). She is strong willed, hardworking and very mature. She has a cavernous plethora of wisdom and experience to dole out on almost any situation at hand. She conducts herself with confidence and a lot of self-discipline. Plain and simple: she knows how to do things right and does them right.

But, like, she’s been eating cereal for dinner for the past two weeks. Not just cereal—cocoa puffs.

I have no idea what to make of this development. I cannot pinpoint exactly why it bothers me so much, but I have some hunches.

1.     The role swap. She is a whole full grown woman. She should be lecturing me about the importance of eating a nutritious dinner, not the other way around.

2.      It’s immature, and unfamiliar. Cereal for dinner is a teenager thing, or a middle aged dad thing, so seeing my very mature mother pour herself a bowl at 9:30 p.m. is, well, disconcerting.

3.     It’s annoying. It just is. I feel like she is copying me. Because I make it look cool. Or something.

So because these cereal events unsettle me so much, I always call her out on it.

Mama! Why are you eating cereal right now?

The first few times she always gave me an excuse. My personal favorite was, “I’m thirsty because you didn’t filter any water.” After a while, she started trying to hide it from me, but whenever I hear the tinkle of poured cereal I fly downstairs like some psycho stalker and flounder in her look of combined guilt and defiance. More recently, though, she shoots right back with a “Why can’t I?” At which point I stutter out some unrehearsed mash of the reasons above. Minus number three.

So this leaves me to contemplate why my mom is doing this. Really, it could be any number of reasons.

1.      Cereal is wonderful--tasty and nutritious. Frankly, it’s a mystery why we don’t eat cereal for every meal. The deliciousness of cereal is probably at least one factor in my mom’s situation.

2.      Reverse psychology—the more I oppose it the more she craves it.

3.      I make it look cool.

4.     The reason that I am most afraid of—she is regressing. Or, at least, having a very belated and mild mid-life crisis. Maybe she regrets living her whole life with such smooth order and focused ambition, and is trying to let loose and capture some wild adolescent experiences which she safely chose to forego in her heyday. Maybe cereal for dinner is her version of reclaiming her youth.

If that last reason is true, then I might be in trouble. What if I’m a bad influence on her? What if my mom is regressing into a less mature state? I have always relied on her maturity and organization to keep both of our lives running smoothly. If she is turning into a teenager, well, all heck might break loose!

But, I’ve thought about it. And yes, I am being high maintenance and touchy—because the most likely reason for this cereal development is not any of the reasons listed above (except number one). Most likely, I just do not know my mom as well as I would like to think that I do. In fact, in one of the most recent instances, my mom has responded to my perplexed question of “But why now in your life?” with “This is only what you have seen.” In other words, she has eaten cereal for dinner in the past, times that I have not been aware of, maybe before I was around to judge her for it. As much as I would like to think otherwise, I know only a fraction of my mother as a person. I know only the side of her that she has presented to me; only the version of her that she has become in the most recent section of her life; only “mom.” I have no idea if she was the kind of person who liked to shimmy up the tallest trees, or how tentative she was to ride a bike for the first time, or whether she has an unfulfilled dream to see the world that she pushed away for a family. She has a whole past of living that I have no access to. I am reminded of a character in The Lovely Bones, a novel by Alice Sebold. Abigail, the mom of the main character, Susie, displays a remarkable transition (or, rather, revealing) of character throughout the book. She transitions from the mom her children and husband need her to be into a scared human who needs to leave her family and find herself. Earlier in the book, Susie recalls taking a photograph of her mother in the early lights of morning. Her mother was sitting on the house porch, unaware of Susie’s presence, and not yet hidden behind her mask of red lipstick and resigned to her role as “mother.” In the photograph, Susie sees a depth in her mom's eyes that she never noticed before. At that moment, she discovers the reason why her dad nicknamed her mom “ocean eyes.” Her mom is a whole ocean, and Susie knows only the part of her that she can see. My mom is the same. There is so much more to my mom than I have seen and will ever see, so really I should not be surprised by the things that she does. Chances are, she has been doing them for a lot longer than I have been around. I need to accept this, and accept that there is depth to my mom that I can only ever wonder at. Who am I to limit my mother to the perception she has allowed me to form of her? She is not just a mature person—she is a person who does many mature things, and eats cereal for dinner. She is a cavern of immense profundity. She is more than I will ever know.

I think I’ll start calling her ocean mouth.