Susanne made it through Thanksgiving and then Christmas. She prepared both succulent meals with not even one nibble. Christmas cookies, butternut squash with apples and maple syrup, honey-glazed smoked ham with pears, cranberries and cinnamon. She even joked when our daughter Maeve was setting the table, telling her to set a straw for her instead of a fork and knife.

And now her first birthday with gastroparesis. At least last year she could stick a candle in a gluten-free brownie and make a wish. This year I got her vanilla birthday milkshake and held a single candle in my hand for her to blow out. The kids gathered around the faint yellow glow surrounding the Styrofoam cup like a force field and sang "Happy Birthday." It was mildly pathetic.

She misses food. Misses it very much. I miss having food with her.

Between Susanne's condition and Charlie's diabetes, food is the enemy. Food is a constant and exhausting battle with Charlie. For both Charlie and Susanne, most foods - as tempting and delicious as they may be - will only hurt them minutes or hours later.

Yesterday I took Charlie ice skating on a little lake near our house.  The recent accumulation of snow made for only small sections of skatable ice but it was just enough. On the edge of a tiny lakeside Victorian library built in the 1800s, kids eagerly arrive with hockey sticks and skates draped over their shoulders.  A man with a big beard arrives with a large bucket filled with bread crumbs. He waits as a paddling of ducks and a gaggle of geese fly to him like the pied piper from a small pool of water they have carved in the ice. He spreads the breadcrumbs, stays for a moment and then leaves. It's all very charming. A scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

With one exception - the kid with rosy cheeks testing his blood sugar on a bench while the dad hovers over. I don't recall seeing too many scenes of children with diabetes in Norman Rockwell paintings.

There was also a Starbucks lakeside and I told Charlie we could go for hot chocolate if his blood sugar was decent. I hate that I have to preface it with that proviso. He's rarely given a straight answer when it comes to food. Lots of "maybes" and "we'll sees." Food is the enemy.

Charlie watched the countdown and looked surprised.

"Whoa! Looks like we'll be having that hot chocolate after all," he said with a grin.

"I'm 27."

"Jesus!"

Charlie drained two juice boxes and we took a short walk along the water's edge to Starbucks. Much to Charlie's delight, we found an orphan hockey puck embedded in the ice along the way.  We ordered two steaming hot chocolates for our freezing cold bodies and looked out at the frozen lake where the ducks and geese had returned to their crowded bath. I unfolded a pamphlet with nutritional information like it was a road map. Charlie thanked me sweetly for taking him ice skating and for the hot chocolate.

 It was almost perfect.