hindsight's twenty-twenty

If you have been around Hayley and me together since September, you've heard me say it at least fourteen times: Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Never has the phrase been so fitting. Pretty much every ailment that she's had since the first grade can now be explained by an auto-immune reaction to that pesky protein, gluten.

Stupid wheat.

Well, that's good, you might be thinking. At least now she can just avoid certain foods, and she'll feel all better!  Easy for you to say. You still get to eat whatever you want... and drink beer.

We've all tried to sympathize, but it's hard to really get it when we aren't directly effected. We don't have to read all the labels or worry that someone chopped our veggies with a bread knife. So this Lent, I'm boosting my sympathetic powers. Gluten-free lent, and by Easter, (my) hindsight really will be that much closer to twenty-twenty. Or so I thought.

A mere five days in, and I've already glutened myself several times. Salad dressing, licorice, the absent-minded swig of someone else's beer. This gluten shit is hard to avoid. Not to mention, the first two days I was so at a loss for what to eat, it seemed the only things I could find were fruit and cheese. The grocery store seemed like torture, and after wandering every aisle looking for a quick fix to my falling-out and settling on some puffed rice snacks, I was still starving.

But what this attempt at empathy is lacking is that I don't get sick when I get glutened. I only worry because I have that strong Catholic guilt, not because a slip-up leaves me incapacitated for days. Maybe I won't have achieved true hindsight by Easter, but at least I'll have a better understanding of how hard it is to avoid getting glutened. And perhaps even better, I'll have some delicious ideas to share.