SIMPLICITY

April 13, 2020

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

     In this staying-at-home time, simplicity seems to have re-appeared, just as cleaner air nationwide is reported, that due to decreased vehicle movement. Not using the car as much, not running off to appointments, visits, stores, brings us back inside the house where we might usually just sleep, to the memory of youthful summers where the school clock gave way to a different, simpler day schedule. Despite the horrors of this gone-viral time, the slower pace perhaps reminds us that we don’t always have to run to the finish line, or at least not to the next hill to climb.

     For me, it has taken a few weeks to realize my pulse can be slower, and the niceness of that moment came in a bowl of cereal, not my usual breakfast these days but in staying-home, it’s been back-to-childhood things. 

     When you eat cereal, which you don’t really eat but spoon it in, crunch and swallow, you must have something to read. It’s required. At my grandfather’s house, it was the Daily News. In my childhood, the cereal box, which sometimes had little stories or drawings on them. Otherwise, you read the ingredients. You had to read something.

     I read the ingredients as I had my 2020 cereal. But then the raisin bran was soon out of the bowl, and I could see a circular pattern, like the rings of Saturn.

     Instantly, I thought of my mother’s old crockery and the patterns I stared at eating cereal. I then thought of my late Mom, heard her voice and got a whiff of the old house smell.

     Such simple but vital memories, all from a cereal bowl during a worldwide crisis. The gods can be good to us.

     The writer is a retired newspaperman. ahgunther@yahoo.com