Cheerios

Can you find happiness in a breakfast cereal?  My son thinks that Cheerios are the bees knees.  The kid will much them morning, noon, and night.  He starts his day with them.  He will finish his dinner and immediately demand a bowl of them.  He will ask for more just before bed.

"Cheerio!" he shouts at us.  "Cheerio?" he'll ask over and over and over and over.  Or for a change it will be, "Cereal!  Cereal?  Cereal!!!"  The two year old mind is amazing.

I find the darn things everywhere.  Under the coffee table when I roll it aside to work out.  Under the couch when I'm looking for my shoes.  They fall out of laundry, they crunch in my car seat, they even mysteriously appear buried in various body parts when we undress the child for the night.

But the most mysterious thing about Cheerios, of all their magical qualities, is the sheer joy they bring to my son.  Something in that crunch, crunch, crunch makes him just grin away.  There he sat on my dining room floor on New Year's Eve, with just a sippy cup and a bowl of dry cereal.  Crunching, babbling, smiling.

Is it that Cheerios are magical?  Or is it simply a matter of experiencing life through a child's mind?  What if we each stopped a moment to park it on the hardwood floor with a simple bowl of wheaty O's, and enjoyed them for their simplicity, their texture, their nourishment?  Is it possible to find Nirvana in a bowl?  Keep on crunching and let me know.