If I hadn’t wiped down our kitchen counter minutes before, I may not have noticed it at all. But against the backdrop of the bare, white laminate, I saw the sesame seed flip in the air like a distant snowboarder above a tableau of snow.
I examined the label of the puff pastry I’d just opened. “Allergy Information: Manufactured in a facility that processes eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, and dairy.” The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) does not require manufacturers to list whether their products contain sesame. It is not among the top eight food allergens. For the son of my close friend, though, it’s in the top four. He’s been to the emergency room. How hard can it be to avoid sesame, one might ask. Erase entire continents of cuisine. Find it lurking in a neighbor’s powder-room soap. That’s how hard.
While I go about my day, my friend steals time to dial Pepperidge Farm and Wonder. Ten transfers and nine holds-deep into the phone call, she reaches a supervisor who knows the manufacturing lines. “Is this bread made in a dedicated, allergen-free facility? Are the lines ever used to make any thing else–even once?” The accuracy of the stranger’s replies can shape the fate of her child. She delves deeper. When I next visit her home, she offers us homemade rolls.
Four years ago my family retreated into the private world of food allergies. The doctor handed us Epipens. We jabbed fake needles into our legs, practicing for anaphylaxis. A lifelong cook, I evicted the entire contents of our pantry like a landlord casting tenants onto the streets. Inside, I was a paper doll cut from a sheet of fear.
For the better part of a year, we scrutinized every morsel that went into our mouths. Part of me believed that we’d been misdiagnosed. We happened upon an allergist in North Carolina. Our wagon climbed over the Blue Ridge Mountains several times to see him. Nurses sold the diagnostic skin pricks as “tickles,” but the grids of pins hurt all the same. At our last visit we sat surrounded by white coats, ate a spoonful of peanut butter, watched the clock, and were free.
When people visit our house, they see the crisp, white furniture and think “Architect.” The truth is actually “Genuflect.” On white tables and chairs, I can see the subtlest trace of food and wipe it clean before my friend arrives with her son. She would never ask this of me, but I’ll always ask it of myself. I kneel down and check the seats. I check for seeds.
Awww, Whitney. Man. And you’re the only place where we’ll eat an entire meal without worry, right down to the heavenly strawberry shortcake. What a paradise you create for us in so many ways. Thank you.
It takes a (loving) village to raise a child.