I was going to be a mother, and I was rhapsodic. My body softened and swelled into a comfortable home for a new soul. There were baby showers and beribboned boxes bursting with tiny offerings for a brand new boy. I folded soft, miniature flannel shirts, small overalls, and tiny socks, and tucked them into drawers, content.
My baby came into the world with too much blood and a touch of trauma. I smiled down into my son’s scarlet face and inhaled the scent of new life. My child grew and gazed at me through sleepy eyes full of trust. And then one day, I met my nemesis in a most unexpected place—the kitchen cupboard.
The battle began during lunch. I juggled my baby and my bowl of pasta and prayed, as every mother does, for time to eat even a few bites. He fussed until I touched the cheese sauce to his tiny mouth. Instant silence. A moment of peace. I innocently gulped down a few spoonfuls. Then I watched, horrified, as my baby’s face swelled to twice its normal size. Hives covered his soft skin like fungus. He tried to cry through bulbous lips, but the sound was only a rasp that raked my heart.
The doctor’s diagnosis— allergic to food dyes. I was old acquaintances with anxiety, but the squeezing of my heart, the less oxygen than I needed, the feeling I was about to shatter like glass into a thousand jagged pieces, was new.
A birthday party. Every child loves gifts, balloons, and ice cream. Unless you are my son and allergic to milk and not dyes after all. Unless someone holds a loaded weapon to your small mouth, a silver spoon holding a bite of cream that could kill you even as you savored the seductive sweetness.
The allergist. The soft-spoken man delivered words of doom in a conversational tone, as if the string of vowels and consonants flowing from his mustached mouth had not just been a clash of swords as the battle intensified. “Your son is allergic to food ma’am, to sustenance, ironically to what he must have to survive. Good luck.”
The winding journey back to the cold farmhouse. I said a final goodbye to my old self, raced through all the stages of grief in one car trip, and condensed them down to the only stage mothers actually have time for— keep going.
Know your enemy. Books and studying, wandering the aisles of health food stores, obsessively reading labels, clearing out cupboards and refilling them with safe food that costs three times as much as the dangerous food. With every bold step forward, I drove my nemesis back.
I cooked allergen-free meals from scratch to nourish my child, skirmishes in the battle three times a day. They called me the muffin lady, and I baked more to mask the panic that was my constant companion.
I fought through the holidays. They attacked me with candy, colored eggs, and confections, and lured my little one to his doom with deadly bites of peanut coated in milk, deviously disguised as chocolate.
The walk for food allergy research. The blue sky and the lush green grass of the park, the children’s laughter floating through the sunshine-soaked air. But there were peanuts scattered across the verdant field, and my child leapt ludicrously over the enemy to raise money to fight the enemy.
I was ridiculed and maligned, misunderstood and labeled. Overprotective, a helicopter mom, I dismissed their judgement, donned my armor, and protected my son from the enemy who lurked everywhere.
Block and thrust, spin and stab, the battle continued and my baby grew into a boy and then a man. Victory should have been mine, but I still fought from afar with advice that went mostly unheeded— bring your EpiPen, read the ingredients, wash your hands.
I ceded my sword to my son, but the war was not over; it was in my mind. My nemesis abandoned antagonism for subterfuge and slipped through my thoughts as dread.
I picked up new weapons and stood my ground. Now, my nemesis still lurks, and the battle rages on, but victory is mine. It was always mine. For against the power I wield, a mother’s love, nothing can stand.
Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash
