Nutrition Facts

7%

Cholesterol

Protein 3g

Calcium

4%

Best before:

Remember how when you were little, Mom would sit across from you at breakfast, looking at you as you stuffed cereal? You’ve always liked to read the cereal box, she would say. And when you’re older she might add to her college friends, oh boy, he’s gonna be a cereal box reader for the rest of his life, like how he always flings his dirty socks onto the living room floor.

You would make fun of her in your stand-ups. She didn’t have work till noon but would be up even before me, you would tell the crowd. Yankin me out of bed so I can make it to my eight o’clock classes. She would click clack in the kitchen while I stared at nothing with my tooth brush wike wis (and you would demonstrate as ridiculously as you could, hoping the audience would laugh). She would blah and blah and blah (and you would mimic her high pitched Hong Kong drawl) while I gobbled cereal and read the cereal box.

Crispy             squares

            4 cups

Milk

            2 teaspoons

            2 cups

Marshmellows

Mix well in pan. Bake for

Aww you’re so cute, Laurie said, I didn’t know you read the cereal box. You noticed with the corner of your eye how pretty Laurie was: smudged eye shadow, uncombed hair.

Perhaps that’s what women do, sitting across the breakfast table and looking at you while you eat cereal. You didn’t share this conclusion at your stand-ups.

Ingredients:

 Sugar,                                     wheat flour, corn flour, oat fibre, oil

            hydrogenized                           ascorbic acid, coca powder,     white #4, brown #6,

Allergens

Wheat, corn, soybean.

Laurie liked having chicken noodle soup for breakfast. She ate her breakfast much faster than you did. In fact she did everything faster than you did: the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she analyzed the economic and political impact of the new mayor or forecasted the performance of her hedge fund. But after she wiped her mouth and daubed her lips scarlet, she would look at you as you read your cereal box, perhaps straightening her teal blazer, perhaps slipping on her panty hose. Then would be the pecks of her stiletto boots on the wooden stairs. You would sit there, like a boy standing by the shuddering tracks watching the increasingly distant smoke of the train. Perhaps you would jot down a few story ideas on a napkin.

Giant panda George is lost. Can you help him find him way out? Draw a track through this maze so he can reach his bamboos.

You sure felt a bit more self-conscious when the baby came, didn’t ya? A thirty something eating in front of the toddler the good old Panda Crisp. Laurie liked to feed the baby breakfast herself. Even the baby felt the efficiency when she was with Laurie: what would normally take her an hour to eat would happen in merely fifteen minutes. Laurie would remind you not to make her dinner (networking). And then off she went, her new nerdy black Gucci frames deepening the angles of her face.

You might poke at the baby’s nose and laugh while she giggles, or change her diapers as she wiggled her chubby little arms and legs. Or mop the floor and wipe the toilet. As light melts into darkness you would have dinner with the baby, a bite for you, a spoonful for her. You might entertain her with impressions of the interviewers who never called you back. She would laugh.

Panda crisp      inspired by love for our daughter.        with the freshest fluffs of oat fibres,               . The Chinese say a good start is half of the finish,            

Mom retired, but she kept her ways, huh? Waking up early and yanking you out of bed, dragging you to the breakfast table bright and early. And there she would sit, looking at you as you munched your cereal, and talk and talk and talk.

When will you wake up and do something real with your life? Look around you, which forty something still lives with the poor old mother?

7%

Cholesterol

Sugars

20%

20mg
4%

Oh Billie.

Mom sighed, and went back upstairs.

And you stare at the cereal box, looking but not really looking. You bundle up the empty part of the cereal bag, gave it a twist and carefully swung it into a knot.