I'm sorry I figured it out

 Every now and then I buy a puffed wheat, glazed cereal, usually generic brand.  I just love it for some reason, the taste and the texture of the wheat in my mouth - and wheat is so bad for us these days - genetically engineered, full of toxins...

But I love it.  And today I realized why and it made me cry.  

When Ron and I first got together we were very poor.  He just had a disability check and some training classes in office work; I had a $5 an hour menial job as a cashier.  So money was tight for groceries.  

Our first apartment didn't even have a kitchen just a fridge and a counter, a hose coming out of the wall into a plastic bucket that served as a sink.  The plumbing backed up frequently with raw sewage in my shower.  I didn't have a tub, either.  Ron bought a cheap microwave and I could cook just about anything in there even peanut brittle one night.  I also got a crock pot with my employee discount and we could make roasts with cheap cuts of meat.  Ron had an old deep fat fryer and we made a lot of fried chicken leg quarters.  We would buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes, a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters, and work on that all week.  

Probably I am not a big fan of potatoes in any form; or fried chicken with a bone, these days.  

One thing I had forgotten until today was the cereal.  Cereal was kind of a big deal for me growing up, I had the kind of household where all the kids had cereal for breakfast before going off to school.  I was a good kid but reacted badly to some food dyes that have since been banned.  So I had to eat the plain "Chex" sort of cereals, Rice Krispies (I hate them now), etc.  The other kids got the "fun" stuff with the sugar, brightly colored pellets, and marshmallows.  

Some times I would have oatmeal but Mom used to buy the fruit and cream assortment and the other kids would eat the "good" flavors, leaving me with the banana flavor.  

So I'm living on my own, on a limited budget.  Sometimes I bought the expensive cereal if I was feeling flush but the Safeway had a HUGE bag of puffed wheat cereal in a plastic bag for $2 I think, far less than the other cereals, and far more product.  I ended up eating a lot of that.  

I liked the taste.  It made me happy and filled me up.  My nutrition book said it was actually good for me.  And I realized today that is why the cereal can make me very happy or sad, depending, it reminds me of early days with Ron when I was full of love and hope for the future.  

And that has me sad, now.  I'm sorry I figured it out.