On Kids Cereal and Comfort

In the mornings I have been eating a (heated) bowl of golden nuggets. You know the type of cereal as a teacher I'm meant to discourage little people from eating because it has that deathly amber colour on the sugar of the nutrition strip? Well, life is too short to care about ambers of sugar, even if it is 6 o'clock in the morning. In one part, I don't know why that feels significant. But in another aspect, I really do. 

I love listening to the joyful requests of the little people that co-exist inside my head. Sprinkles! on ice-cream? you can have sprinkles. I want a hot chocolate. I don't even like hot chocolate as an adult, but we can have hot chocolate. The milk needs to be hot. I haven't eaten hot milk in cereal in at least 14 years but we can go with it. 

It's comforting. It's in repetition of the same food and clothes and music and movies. It's a blanket weighted in the truth that we survived then, and we can survive now. 

A well-known children's favourite is the age-old We're Going On a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Wisely, we're reminded, “you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you’ve got to go through it!” It is said with far more enthusiasm than I can muster, and I wish, beyond the book, we were talking about long wavy grass that goes swishy swashy. But nonetheless; you’ve got to go through it. And ironically, don't they all run home and decide never to go on a bear hunt again? Maybe that's where the metaphor ends...

Regardless, Bear Hunt is an undoubted favourite for little people and minds, and their teachers who put any noun in replace of 'bear' - we're going on a baby hunt (for the baby Jesus - yes that is a variation of the book, step aside rainbow hunt). It's the rhythm, the rhyme, and undoubtedly the predictability that draws us into the comfort, humour and chaos of this journey. 

Unlike this unspecified 'we' that goes seeking a bear, however, I prefer to escape. I don't go looking for the caves or the mud or the long wavy grass to travel through. I would find a little nook within the cave to hide in instead, or feel the mud in my feet as I gaze into space. I've always been able to channel out just about anything from boredom, to a merciless ramble from a teacher, to any other experience I didn't want to Be 'There' For. Book after book, filled notebook after filled notebook, reams and reams of internal dialogue and scripting and make believe. I could, and arguably still do, flee any undesirable scenario. But, you cannot find peace by avoiding life.

The tendency to flee, to avoid life, is a knee-jerk response I'll admit. Like a balloon held by a child, I forget to hold on until it's already floating in the clouds; I forget to hold on until I'm watching it float above and having the emotional response of a three-year-old because remembering to hold on is hard. And I admittedly get stuck in those escapist alternative realities. My response switches to I can't, my brain starts writing different endings, my body detaches limb-by-limb until I can't remember how to feel my toes. 

And then the switch flicks, and my adult self steps up. Unknowingly, a bit like she’s just popped out for a brief nap and has returned refreshed, she looks around seeming to ask, “What did I miss?” and imminently follows it with a peaceful, “That’s okay. We can sort that,” gentle smile, kind eyes, patience that is not phased by untethered balloons. 

Yet bigger, and far more importantly, that gentle whisper that is so much bigger reminds us, "When you go through deep waters, I will be with you." (Isaiah 43:2). When I can't reach the version of myself who can handle it, and also when it's too big for her, there are gracious and gentle hands holding it regardless. 

Here is to not avoiding life, to eating kids cereal until that capable self wakes from a nap, to letting every part be held by hands that are greater.