Fatherhood, like many things in life, is a lot like playing cards. Whether you play poker or blackjack, or not, you understand that card games are where you are dealt a set number of cards that represent your hand. You have no control over the hand you are dealt. Your hand is instead determined by the fates, or simply the randomness of the universe, and you are expected to make the best of it. Those who receive a better hand did not necessarily earn their position, though that does not prevent them from exploiting said position. And who can blame them? Nobody willingly folds a winning hand.
If the dealer in life, whomever that may be for you, decided to give you wealth, or siblings, or religion, or poverty, it is something that is determined for you the moment you are born. You do not chose your parents, your brothers, your sisters, no more than you choose your language or where you are born. Most of these are consequences of decisions made by other people. Independent of any theological beliefs, most of us are here because of decisions made by our parents, biological or otherwise.
My children are no different. They are here because of decisions their parents made, and their circumstances have very little to do with anything they have done right or done wrong. My son, for example, was born with an anaphylactic allergy to milk protein — a protein that happens to permeate American society in the most unexpected ways. It's in everything from bread and pastries, to prescription drugs, to chalk (that's right, dustless chalk, of all things), to everything in between that is both expected and unexpected.
Living with an anaphylactic food allergy presents its challenges, but probably not in the ways most would expect. The most challenging aspect of living with a food allergy, for example, is navigating society (i.e. other people). I'd love to say, "at least I can count on family," but I cannot, because family tends to be the least receptive, with surprisingly few exceptions. The push-back usually comes from those who question the normalcy of the necessary precautions, completely overlooking the reality that, for my son, necessary precautions are normal.
This is not a character flaw. It is simply the hand he was dealt, and he has no choice but to persevere — but he's still a child, so we do what we can to make his childhood as relatable to his peers as possible. Yes, he can consume a dairy-free pizza if he wants to. There's no law that pizza isn't pizza without diary. He can also consume hamburgers and fries, just like his peers.
Birthdays are another story. That's where things can get tricky, because so many recipes for cakes call for dairy, and up until very recently, the dairy-free alternatives were anything but cost-effective. Then there's ice-cream, which takes the proverbial crown of difficulty, because so many "dairy-free" options are made with dairy (regardless of how illogical this sounds). That's great for a vegan or anyone else choosing not to consume diary, but when it's a matter of life or death, there can be nothing left to chance.
Thankfully, the market has changed with demand for dairy-free ice-creams, allowing us to locate coconut milk, almond milk, and cashew milk ice-creams that he can consume. Sure, we had to go to random specialty stores to find them, but they're actually quite good compared with a dairy-based counterpart.
On his sixth birthday, he was going to have his moment: cake and ice-cream like a normal six-year-old. We were excited. We had built it up for him (in our anticipation of the moment), so he could share in the excitement as well. With our cameras in hand, he tried it, albeit gingerly. Then he made a face that we were unsure how to interpret.
"Is it alright?" His mother asked him gently.
Trying to force a smile, he responded, "it's too cold ... can we heat it up?" He asked as he pointed toward the microwave.
