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                         Just Another Day...
                         -------------------
                            by Jim Lyles

(This is a fictional account of a bad day for the mother of a celiac
child.)

You wake up bleary-eyed, alarm jangling.  You want to roll over, but
your daughter has school.  Your husband is already dressed, and will
soon be heading out to work.  So you'll have to get up and help your
daughter get ready.  Just another day in the life of a celiac mom.

You struggle out of bed and grab your robe, already planning the
morning's activities.  First breakfast for your daughter, then a sack
lunch for her to take.  You wish fervently that you could just give
her some money and let her buy her lunch; but of course she can't
because she's a celiac.  It's just not fair!  Other moms can take a
day off when they're feeling tired.  Oh well, what does it take to
slap together a ham and cheese sandwich, no wait, you're out of ham;
it'll have to be peanut butter and jelly--then it hits you:  You
forgot to make bread last night!

Okay, no need to panic, you'll just dash into the kitchen and quickly
make some muffins.  By the time she goes out to catch the bus, they'll
be cool enough for you to stuff a couple in her lunch.  So you grab
out your trusty recipe book, reach for the gluten-free flour
blend....which you realize is empty.  Groaning, you grab the bins of
rice flour, tapioca starch, and potato starch so you can mix up some
more gluten-free blend....only to find that the rice flour container
only has a few tablespoons of flour in it.

You drop into a chair, feeling like a failure.  You never made it to
the health food store last week; you are completely out of rice flour.
You toy briefly with trying to do without rice flour, but no, this is
no time for experiments.

Your daughter comes in to eat breakfast, and you have no bread to give
her for toast.  But you do have some GF waffles in the freezer, so you
give her two of those instead.  She's happy, and you've avoided a
crisis--for now.  But what about lunch?  Glumly, you look in the
pantry and discover some long-forgotten rice cakes.  Plain, boring
rice cakes.  You find them as appetizing as styrofoam.  You can feel
the guilt washing over you in waves, like the time you tried body
surfing at the beach and spent the rest of the vacation picking sand
out of your hair.  You decide to "face the music" by telling your
daughter now that she would have to settle for rice cakes in her
lunch.  She smiles and says, "With peanut butter?  Okay!"  Her
nonchalant acceptance of this lunchbox travesty only makes you feel
worse.

So off she goes to school, and you collapse in a chair.  You feel
angry that you should have to deal with a special diet all of the
time.  You rail against fate for having chosen you to deal with all
this stuff.  Then you remember that as hard as it is for you, it is
worse for your daughter since she has to BE on the diet, 24 hours a
day, all the time.  She deals with this cheerfully most days, so why
can't you?  What right do you have to complain?  As you sullenly
berate yourself, you can't help thinking of all the other mothers who
buy their bread instead of baking it, who never look at ingredient
labels, who've never been in a health food store, and who've never
ordered food by mail.

Having completed your little "pity party", you rouse yourself and head
out to the health food store.  You buy rice flour, some gluten-free
cereals, a few boxes of that gluten-free macaroni and cheese mix, and
some gluten-free pretzels.  You wish the pretzels were cheaper and
lower in fat, because they are really GOOD and you'd like to munch on
them yourself.  With a sigh you make your purchases and head out for
other errands.

That's the part that really stinks.  You still have to do all the
"normal" errands that any mother would do, in addition to all the
extra celiac shopping and baking you do.  Among your many stops you
remember to buy sugar and eggs, because you are supposed to send
cookies with your daughter to school tomorrow.  Then it's back home
again where you put your purchases away and eat a quick lunch.

Of course, the breakfast dishes are still in the sink, and the house
is a wreck, so you spend the afternoon cleaning things up.  Then it's
time to start supper and to greet your daughter as she gets home from
school.  Time flies by, and before you know it it's 8 pm and you're
just finishing up the dishes.  Then you realize you never started the
bread machine.  It takes over two hours for the bread to mix, rise,
and bake, and you know you have to stay up until it is done so that
you can get the bread out of the bread pan to cool.  If you leave it
in the pan overnight, then it gets a little soggy and doesn't taste as
good or slice as well.

Once again, you grab the gluten-free flour blend; and once again you
realize it is empty.  Well, at least this time you know you have the
flours you need to make the blend.  So you quickly cut open the rice
flour bag....too quickly, as it happens, since you spill some of it on
the counter and floor.  You decide to slow down and take a deep
breath--only to start a coughing spell from breathing in the rice
flour dust still in the air.  Never mind, you'll clean the mess up
later.

Eventually you get the gluten-free flour blend mixed up and start
scooping out the dry ingredients in the recipe.  You pull the xanthan
gum out of the fridge, open it....and realize it is nearly empty.
There is no way to buy anymore now, of course; it is 8:20 pm!  You
remember reading somewhere about substituting unflavored gelatin, so
you decide to try that instead; your daughter WILL have bread
tomorrow.  It takes another five minutes to find it, but in the end
you succeed and continue with the recipe.

Of course, in your hurry to get the bread started, you forgot that the
butter needs to be melted first.  So, after mixing all the dry
ingredients, mixing the eggs, water, and vinegar, you finally start
melting the butter.  Finally at 8:40 pm you have it all mixed
together, and you start the bread machine.

While the bread is baking you catch up on the wash.  There are clothes
to be folded, shirts to be ironed; more of the stuff that "normal"
moms do.  You imagine that the normal moms would be done by now, and
could relax for awhile before going to bed at a reasonable hour.  But
not you; no, you'll be up 'til past 11 pm again.

You're still working on the laundry when you hear the bread machine's
signal, and you pull the bread out to let it cool.  You decide to
continue with the laundry.  Afterwards, you decide to go ahead and
slice the bread up tonight, so it will be ready for breakfast and
lunch tomorrow.

At last the bread is sliced and stored in airtight plastic bins.  The
bread smells really good, and you decide to eat a piece of it yourself
while you read the paper.  You feel just a twinge of guilt over this,
but you're going to eat one of the heels which your daughter doesn't
care for, so you really don't need to beat yourself up over it.  You
get a glass of milk and eat the bread just as it is, without any
butter.  You're thinking that it really does taste pretty good, though
it is quite different from regular bread.

You scan the headlines, and an article on the front page immediately
catches your eye.  You read about an 8-year-old girl with an allergy
to garbanzo beans who died from SMELLING them as they were being
cooked during a family gathering.  You read about the tearful
interviews with her parents, aunt, and grandmother; they never
realized she was in such danger just from walking through the kitchen
at the wrong time.

Your celiac daughter is the same age.  Suddenly you feel almost
grateful that she's a celiac; at least you don't need to worry about
her suddenly collapsing and dying from accidental gluten contact!

You finish the bread and milk, and go to bed.  You think of your
daughter, healthy, happy, sleeping away in her room down the hall.
You realize that life is pretty good, even if you did have a tough
day.  Perhaps you're not as pathetic a mother as you thought earlier
today; maybe you are getting the hang of this special diet.  You fall
asleep quickly and your dreams are pleasant.

Perhaps it is just as well that you didn't remember, before falling
asleep, about those cookies you were supposed to bake to send with
your daughter to school tomorrow.  You'll need that rest to face the
morning, as you scurry about, trying to figure out how to quickly
throw them together, especially since you'll find that you are out of
vanilla.  Yes, that can all wait until tomorrow....just another day in
the life of a celiac mom.