Allergies

My sweet baby niece (who is going to be four in February and isn't really a baby at all anymore!) has severe food allergies. She eats almost exclusively chicken and rice, supplemented by nutritional formula. Well we were playing "car" last weekend, pretending to go to the sto' to pick up snacks. I asked her brother what he was getting and he said "macaroni and cheese!!", very excited about the prospect of imaginary mac and cheese. I asked Lucy the same question and she said, with the same level of enthusiasm as her brother, "CHICKEN!!"

The girl loves chicken. She eats it plain, with just a bit of olive oil and salt and thinks it is the greatest thing on earth. But when she said this, it made me a little sad, knowing she'll never get to enjoy some really awesome foods because they'll make her sick. But what would have made me more sad is if she had said mac and cheese because I know she won't ever be able to have that. At this point in her life, she really doesn't know what she is missing. She knows there are foods she can't eat, but it doesn't seem to bother her. To her, most all the food she gets to eat is at the height of deliciousness

But I know there will come a time when she'll know that she's missing out. Food being the social glue that it is, I worry about her when she starts going to school. There will be birthday parties and cupcakes and pizza parties and she won't be able to eat like her classmates and friends. Only time will tell how she handles this. It may be a struggle or it may not even matter that much to her. But to me, it is worrisome

At any rate, her relationship with food is already vastly different than my own. While I check the back of packages mostly out of curiosity and fascination at the way some foods are put together, her mother (and soon she) checks the ingredients to ensure there is nothing in there that will send her into anaphylaxis. She will grow up to have a hyper-awareness of what goes into her body, which ultimately isn't a bad thing, but I wish for her sake that it weren't because her life depends upon it.