It happens, generally, when the sun is out, when the sky is at its bluest, when my heart is settled and I’m focusing on my life with Susan, on writing and cooking, on our dogs and the garden, on the travel that we’re planning, and on the future. Years ago, it wasn’t specifically limited to Sunday afternoons, although it felt that way: my parents and I would pile into my father’s Oldsmobile and drive out to Brooklyn on the BQE, over the Kosciuszco Bridge and past the live gas stack whose live flame terrorized me, and we’d continue east, down the long, tree-lined Ocean Parkway to my grandparents’ building and, there, once we parked and my father turned the ignition off, my mother would refuse to get out of the car. Suddenly, with the sun shining and me daydreaming in the backseat, and my father whistling along with Chopin on WQXR, we’d park, he’d unbuckle his seatbelt, and she’d stare straight ahead and that was it; I’m not getting out of the car.
normally, my response to all of this mishegas would be to get into my kitchen immediately and make the things that give me comfort: macaroni and cheese, sourdough bread, spaghetti and meatballs, fried rice topped with a fried egg and Sriracha, a glass of really good red wine. But I can’t, because it appears that I, like thousands of other Americans in the middle of their lives, have suddenly developed food allergies. I’ve gone through a series of test where I’ve had more blood siphoned out of myself than gas from a ’78 Buick. I’m in the throes of an elimination diet which has left me eating an appalling amount of animal protein, greens, supplements, very few grains, no dairy, no eggs, no gluten, and no wine.
At first, I came at it like a bat out of hell, all pompous and gloating about the wonderful dishes I was making: the grilled sardines and quinoa salad for breakfast; the herb-stuffed roast chicken on a bed of garlicky rapini. How lovely and delightful. For the first week. And then I started to break out in hives that seemed to correlate not with what I was or wasn’t eating (because, frankly, I haven’t been eating much), but with the awfulness of the news: no gluten? No problem. But five minutes of watching Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and I have to take a Benadryl. No scrambled eggs? Fine. I’ll suffer. But combine my scrambled eggless breakfast plate with news about Vladimir Putin, and welts appear on my back. Even my FitBit gave me a rash, but only while I was listening to a story about ebola.
When I learned about Robin Williams, my body seemed to give up the ghost, just as it did last December, six months after losing beloved family family members when my book came out; back then, I developed a lung infection that stayed with me through early June. When I heard the news about Williams,
So call me crazy:
