SANDRA BEASLEY is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Made to Explode, and the memoir Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. She lives in Washington, D.C.
It’s my first full night in Homer, Alaska. I arrived in Anchorage last night, sleeping fitfully on an airport massage chair. Now I have a cabin all to myself, a desk with a window view, and the company of five other writers for the month of June, all of us here for a writing retreat. Our residency is on the coast of Cook Inlet, a crescent of sloping forest with the Kenai Peninsula to the east. The mountains across the water are etched blue on blue, capped in brightest white. Really, these mountains are volcanoes, Iliamna and Augustine, part of the tectonic Ring of Fire. We will soon learn to distinguish the volcanoes’ active steam from the ambient fog that drifts with the wind.
The artist residency employs a chef, who cooks individual lunches and communal dinners, and we’re in charge of cleanup afterward. At the welcome dinner, we do the usual surveys: your genre, your proposed project, your actual project, where you traveled from, who is partnered, who has kids. After the last clatter of plates being hand-dried and silverware being sorted, the other residents clear out of the main house. I sit on the couch longways, my feet pointed toward the row of bay windows, and stare, hoping to spot some wildlife. We’ve already glimpsed our first bald eagles soaring—“doing thermals,” or –ying into convection currents, the residency’s coordinator explained.
I have a book in my lap, but I’m not reading it. Instead, I notice distinctive patterns of movement on the water, halfway between the piny tree line and the horizon. A blow of mist and then a gray swell. A blow of mist, a gray swell. Mist, swell. Mist, swell. I recognize these rhythms: a small pod of humpback whales is making its way in front of the residency. I am delighted, and sad, because I am remembering. There is only one other place where I’ve seen whales.
Within an hour after my arrival, I met the chef in the kitchen. She lined up three products on the counter: a tub each of nondairy butter, nondairy feta, and nondairy yogurt. “What do you think of these options?” she asked. The look on my face was probably not good. She was excited to bake for me, to work around my allergies, to provide so many options—
“Please don’t ask me to eat these things,” I blurted out.
I didn’t know how to explain 40-plus years of training my body to be on high alert for the colors, textures, and tastes that these foods were meant to mimic. How impossible it was for me to find them appetizing, even if I knew on a rational level that they would not harm me.
Fortunately, she took my response in stride. “Everyone’s got their thing,” she said, “when it comes to food.” We talked about where I keep my EpiPens. She asked about how an allergic reaction starts, what my symptoms would be.
When I got back to my cabin, I was tempted to call my mother. She would have laughed at this terrifying mock-milk parade. Commiserating is what we often do during our phone calls. We replay. We vent. Though she doesn’t share a single one of my food allergies, she knows them better than anyone else.
But I
