Lemon Yellow, Orange Orange

Just less than a mile south, a General Mills plant toasts Cheerios on Thursdays. It fills downtown with a sweet homey smell as if Giant Grandma was baking cookies for the kids. The days they bake the Lucky charms I could float right up to heaven. Drive down by the plant and birds are everywhere, the streets are dusted with cereal and grain particles. It was one of the first things noticed when we moved here, this perfume of wheat and sugar, and we breathed deeply, my son and I.

As a child I was due home at five o'clock, we had an early supper. I would trot down the brown sidewalks and since most Moms were housewives in my neighborhood, you could tell what everyone was having for dinner by the smells as you passed each house. Pot roast, spaghetti, ham, baked chicken; if someone had a late start, you would smell frying onions, the start of many suppers. My friend whose mother made her wear therapeutic shoes never had a good dinner smell coming from her house. I think they ate salads and a lot of cream cheese.

It was a particular killer if it was Friday, and the non-Catholic ovens contained succulent, stringy chuck roasts. Mom, also a non-Catholic but voted out as headed for limbo at the time, would fry up eggs and mashed potatoes for Friday repast. For some reason, this combination would appear with that bright orange squash you could buy in blocks in the freezer section. On the plate, it looked godawful. If you mixed everything together, as I had a habit of doing, the mashed, squash and egg yolk blended into pre-Warhol silkscreen colors and was easier to get down. Lots of salt and pepper on that one.

To me, if you want to mix your food, go right ahead as long as you eat it and are not planning anarchy. A good example would be my favorite, canned corn and mashed potatoes. Mom would sort of yell, but I had been such a picky eater that the school sent home notes telling them to beef me up. Since it was a battle to get me to eat meat, the doctor prescribed milkfat; I then received lots of ice cream, which was good. The other side was that at bedtime I was expected to drink a warm cup of milk from my Hopalong Cassidy mug that had a dollop of melted butter on top. This went on until the doctor pronounced me within spitting range of the lower end of the weight percentile of my age group.

I stayed thin until my son was three. After that, it's all a blur and there is no problemo these days regarding gaining weight. I could almost perform mitosis--the action where a single-cell organism divides in two--and make another person. Almost. Sigh. So I have joined Curves at $34 a month and go jump around for a half hour. Then I get to drive home through the blessed atmosphere which is loaded with the aroma of green clovers, yellow stars, and pink hearts mixed with frosted oats.

Sunday night, put your dogs up and turn on the radio. I have washed the bedding today and will dream Tropical Breezes now with Mango laundry detergent dreams tonight. Dream, my sweets.