I always assumed that when I became a mother, one of my primary roles would be to provide wonderful food for my child. My family has a serious legacy of home cooking—think scratch baking, apocalyptic canning and pickling, butchering our own hogs—and I grew up believing that the best way to take care of your loved ones was to make them dinner. I figured I would lavish my own children with love and butter, and everything else would take care of itself.
I got pregnant while at grad school in England, where, contrary to general expectation, I ate spectacularly. Lunch joints served pastries and jellied eels, and the local supermarket stocked artisanal cheeses, three grades of cream, and organic baby bok choy. I fell under the spell of Nigella Lawson, the celebrity gourmand and cookbook author, who is a tantalizing cross between Martha Stewart and Raquel Welch. I made her diced-carrot-and-peanut-salad recipe so often that I would joke that it was a good thing Europeans don't go for our American hysteria about peanut allergies. Then I'd toss back some pâté and Stilton, wash them down with a beer, and chortle while rubbing my huge belly.
Flash forward: At 10 months old, my son was covered in an itchy rash, eczema, as he had been practically since birth. His body was scabby and his cheeks beet red. We were back in New York City, where strangers felt very comfortable lecturing me about sunscreen, importance thereof. We rubbed him morning and night with creams and oils and unguents. We pestered the pediatrician for miracle cures at every well-child visit, so he finally sent us to the allergist, who sent us to the lab, where they took five vials of blood, then sent us back to the allergist. He told us that our son was allergic to every food you might think to give a child. Really very extraordinarily allergic. In his words, "This kid is the bomb!"
So began our new post-diagnosis reality: No peanuts, obviously—death awaits. Also no wheat, no barley, no rye. No cows' milk and no soy, so no yogurt, no butter, no cheese, no tofu, no soy milk. No eggs. For good measure, no chicken, no rice, no corn, no tomatoes, no apples. Our whole world suddenly seemed dangerous. Well-meaning friends would offer the boy a cookie, or suggest we get an ice cream for the kids, or just leave a bag of Goldfish crackers lying around, and we'd try not to seem too hysterical in response. An inoffensive bowl of mixed nuts on a coffee table looked to us like a loaded gun.
There had been signs, but we didn't put them together, even though my husband and I both suffer from allergic reactions—hives and hay fever, classic indicators that our children would also be prone to allergies of all kinds, including food allergies. The first time I gave my son formula, at 6 months, he turned bright red and sprouted hives. Something similar happened at 8 months, when we thought that a teething boy might like to gnaw on a bagel, and he got a red, puffy face. But he couldn't possibly be allergic to wheat, we thought—too weird.
