Wednesday, June 15, 2011

You ordered a what?

Last night my celiac sent me a text message while I attended a meeting to ask if he could go to lunch in town after his final. I texted back, “Sure, get $$ from Dad.”

My celiac did not get money from Dad, so I handed him some cash and asked him to check in and just let me know where they eventually landed after lunch.

I picked him up after a full day of basketball, Nerf dart-gun battles, wiffle ball and general hanging out with a group of boys that haven’t known my celiac since the pre-K days. That is the thing about moving up and moving on, all sorts of new people have to be introduced to exactly what gluten intolerance entails.

“Where did you go to lunch” I asked.

“Cosi” he replied. Now I cringed a little bit because they have great salads but the bulk of their menu is focused around their delicious looking flat bread.

“What did you eat,” I gingerly questioned.

“A Caesar salad with grilled chicken, no croutons,” said the celiac.

Say what? I mean this is a kid who has NEVER had a green, leafy ANYTHING come remotely close to his mouth.

“It was good, I couldn’t even finish it I was so full.”

I started looking out the car window for the alien spaceship and was wondering what they did to my son. I mean, these are shocking words from a vegetable hater. I thought he would choose skipping a meal over eating a salad any day of the week.

Really, this is big news for the mother of a celiac. Sometimes a salad is the only option. The important thing is sitting around a table, shooting the breeze and sharing a meal with a bunch of friends. These aren’t buddies who have known him since he was three and know all about what he can and can’t eat.

Today I took a little victory lap that my celiac was resilient and worked with the menu selections that were available, prior to that moment he would never have ordered a salad.

Now I just have to hope that some of these middle schoolers like sushi….

Kendall Egan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It has been interesting reading your blog as my 14 year old son was recently diagnosed with Celiac and has suffered from severe food allergies since he was a toddler. I think that is great your son chose the salad! My son normally eats prior to going to hang out with friends but he surprised me the other day when he chose plain rice when others were having pizza.