My birthday was August first, and I’d been fretting about it. On the one hand, I really wanted to see friends that day. Ron and I would be moving to Portland two weeks later, and I had hardly been social at all since getting ulcerative colitis in the spring. If my illness kept me from celebrating even my birthday with my friends here in Madison before we left, it would feel like a bitter defeat—like my illness had won.
On the other hand, I was ill. And overwhelmed. And stressed about what people would eat.
Looming in my mind was the vision of a birthday cake. I couldn’t eat anything that remotely resembled one. I hadn’t yet deviated from my Specific Carbohydrate Diet, so my meals consisted, as they had for months, of broiled meat and mushy food like peeled and cooked carrots, applesauce, and overcooked spinach.
To add to my gloom, I realized I couldn’t bear to watch others eat cake on my birthday, either. Perhaps someone more magnanimous would have smiled her way through such a scene. Comparing myself with that imaginary person in my mind, I worried that I was being selfish, but the fact remained that such generosity was beyond me for the moment. Watching others eat a cake I couldn’t eat, on my own birthday, sounded like pretty much the most depressing birthday ever.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to be around anyone eating anything I couldn’t eat on my birthday. I hated, hated, hated that feeling, still. I wanted to avoid it just this one day. Not on my day!
This was what I wanted, at the least: to be spared the crushing loneliness of food exclusion, a loneliness with which I had become intimately familiar, just for this one day. I wanted this so badly that I was even willing to forego hanging out with friends altogether. That was how awful food exclusion made me feel: I would rather spend my birthday alone than spend it with friends who were eating things I couldn’t eat.
But spending the day alone would be awful, too.
Ron and I talked about the options. I quickly grew tearful and panicky, which had been happening a lot lately. Ron, calm, produced the obvious solution: our friends would share my special diet with me.
I protested that that might be a major imposition—birthday parties were supposed to be fun. He insisted it would not be too much to ask. People could forego their normal food for one meal. They cared about me and would be willing to do it for me. They wouldn’t mind.
I hated inconveniencing people, but finally agreed this was the best solution. Ron emailed our friends and named all my ingredients: burgers, fish, skinless chicken, avocados, ripe bananas, almond butter, natural applesauce (without peels), yogurt, natural grape juice, and very cooked veggies that included green beans, peeled carrots, mushrooms, peeled peppers, peeled and deseeded squash, and spinach.
Any way you slice it, he wrote cheerfully, it’ll be good to be with friends. Hope to see you there!
And he was right. Our friends went above and beyond. They emailed to ask if I could eat this or that spice or veggie. They brought only foods I could eat, and even found creative dishes I hadn’t thought to make out of my strict list of ingredients, like squash mixed together with cooked peppers and green beans. Usually, I had just been eating each food separately from the others, since I was often too overwhelmed to be creative.
Everyone politely exclaimed on the tasty fare, despite its obvious inferiority. I blushed and tried to agree. I found this interesting—they really did seem to enjoy it, perhaps because it was a novelty for them to eat this way. For me, it was a necessity, so I didn’t usually think of it as enjoyable.
Sometimes, at moments when I wasn’t talking to anyone, the sight of them all sitting around, fifteen or twenty people spooning yogurt and applesauce off their plates and forking bunless burger patties into their mouths, brought tears to my eyes. For the first time in several months, the food on my own plate was the same as the food people were eating all around me. I was sharing food with others again. Not just eating at the same time, but eating the same thing. A deep, instinctive, comforting relief settled into my belly.
No one complained that there was no cake.
I spent the evening in a shaky, relieved state of gratitude. It had not been the best birthday ever, but it had been far better than it could have been. I felt grateful to Ron and my friends for making it so.
