A Brave New World

Once a month our elementary school has what they call the Birthday Table. They set up extra tables in the lunchroom, decorate with balloons and such and invite the families of all the kids whose birthdays fall in that month to come eat lunch with their kids. While I was at the birthday table for Matthew’s birthday in February, the lunchroom assistant, who seems to know Matthew quite well, was chatting with me and mentioned that he doesn’t always eat his lunch. This was definitely not news to me. It has been an ongoing conversation where Kevin and I tell him he needs to eat so he has energy to play, grow and learn and he says ok but doesn’t eat his lunch anyway. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that he is bored with his lunch options. His options are limited due to all his allergies and compounded by his own pickiness, so I’m not sure what to do about it. The lunchroom assistant mentioned that the head lunch lady is actually really good about making hot lunch work for the allergy kids and although I told her we didn’t expect anyone to go out of the way because he is allergic to so many things, she dragged me into the lunchroom office and had me talk to the head lunch lady.

I was totally surprised to see that all the kids in the school who are allergic to more than just peanuts or tree nuts (all the school lunches are nut free) had a paper taped to her window so she could see at a glance who is allergic to what. Even though Matthew has never eaten school lunch, his profile was up there too. And the lunch lady proceeded to tell me exactly how she handles all the special food needs, answering all my normal questions before I could even ask them. That is always something that makes me feel like someone really knows what the deal is where food allergies are concerned. In fact, I was so confident in the way she handles everything that eating school lunch became a very real option for Matthew.

Kevin and I talked to Matthew about having school lunch, knowing that it would be scary for him, and told him that we thought it would be great for him to try. It has taken him a few months to work up the courage, but today was his first hot lunch ever. We looked up the menu last night to see which items he could eat. He walked in and talked to the lunch lady this morning so she would know what to make for him. I met him at the school so I could be there when he ate. We had all our bases covered.

Boston, Rylan and William (Matthew’s three school besties) sat with us. Matthew was nervous, of course. It is a very scary thing. But honestly, Boston was almost as nervous as Matthew was. Rylan told Matthew he didn’t want him to die, and William made sure I had Matthew’s Epipens before Matthew started eating. I truly could not ask for better friends. What a great little group they are. And they were all thrilled that everything was just fine.

There are a lot of hard days with food allergy kids: days then they feel excluded, days when an unknowing action makes a normally safe food source unsafe, days when ingredients change and foods have to be eliminated from their diet. But there are good days as well: days when other people go out of their way to make things safe for your kid, days when previously off limits things all of a sudden become an option, days when friends show their love and concern and cheer with you when things go well.

Today was definitely a good day.