One of my favorite breakfasts is oatmeal mush with honey, cinnamon, butter, and nutmeg. Alton Brown says to use a whole nutmeg and a sander rasp, but I’ve never had much luck finding whole megs of nut.
I make it with milk instead of water, then add a splash of milk once it’s done to make a sort of milk gravy. Chewy but soft enough to still be called mush, it feels like comfort in your mouth, like a lover’s tongue without the anxiety or passion.
In Jackson, many places served breakfast, but only a few served oatmeal. Every permutation of Primos had it. One Primos’ wife was named Mary Ann, and another Mary Jane. I always figured this was either some sort of plot to be revealed later or a mnemonic device for the growing Primos clan.
My dad preferred the Primos across from the Baptist Hospital. Inside, it looked like a set from a movie about World War II. Muller Addkison died last year. He held on quite a while. He preferred the Primos on Capitol Street till it burned, so, by the time I was old enough to know what was what, he ate breakfast at the same Primos where my father went to get hamburgers, missing the moment when I’d been born.
Oats are part of my cultural heritage, although my people like to serve them with organ meat. I’ve had haggis, from a scale of pickled chicken’s feet to boiled chitterlings, I’d give it about a six (will not eat again)
You have to love somebody to share breakfast with them. It’s the stage in between sleeping mostly naked and facing the world as a fully armored working office zealot.
Most of the time, Daddy and I never talked during breakfast. We’d share different sections of the paper. In those days, a family of six could each share a different section of the Clarion Ledger, although it might help if one of the teenagers was demonstrating the gross unfairness in their life by refusing to read or touch their eggs.
I’d read in Muscle and Fitness that raw eggs were a great source of protein. It was then featured in the movie “Rocky.” I couldn’t drink six like Rocky, although to be fair, at least two dribbled down the side of his face in the movies.
At school lunch, I thought it might impress the girls if I cracked open eggs instead of eating the hamburger fingers and mashed potatoes, and drank them from a cup. It made an impression, for sure, but not necessarily one that made me seem more likely as boyfriend material.
Becoming stronger is largely a matter of how much discomfort you’re willing to put up with. In the movie “Pumping Iron,” Arnold Schwartzinger compared feeling your muscles engorged with blood to sexual satisfaction. He was lying. Years later, he admitted he was lying. He thought that if he said something outrageous, it’d make the movie more interesting. I knew boys who swore it felt the same way to them. It made me question how much they might be enjoying sex because to me, there was little in common between working out and experimenting with girls. Maybe I had the wrong girls. I did sample a few.
Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called “Glory Days.” Sometimes people accuse me of that when they read my stories about my dad. It’s not like that. Those weren’t my glory days. These days are. Writing about people I miss makes them almost alive again, at least in the space between my ears. These aren’t stories about my glory days. They’re stories about my broken heart.
The Clarion Ledger no longer has six sections. My mother, father, both grandmothers, both grandfathers, and one brother are gone now. Many of the men I used to lift weights with are gone, too. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzinager are still with us, but both of them have only a few of their original parts left, kept working actors via hair plugs and hormone shots.
They test me for testosterone when I go to the doctor now. I’m in the good zone. I think I’d feel it if I weren’t. While I don’t have to have the blue pill, it does make things more predictable.
I eat breakfast every day. Lately, before starting the day, I text something clever to an angel, hoping it’ll get her started on the right foot. She’s smarter than I am, but doesn’t often admit it unless I need scolding.
Breakfast is a moment when you can reflect and acknowledge God’s glory before having to be productive. You don’t even have to believe in God to do it.
When I was a child, they’d show a photograph of a bowl of Count Chocula with eggs, toast, and orange juice, saying it was part of a balanced breakfast. What they left out was that the breakfast was pretty balanced without the chocolate corn serial.
No more raw eggs for me. Oatmeal mush is just fine.
