CEDAR FALLS, IA — My name is Donna Hirsch, I am 58 years old, and I have coordinated the nursery check-in system at Calvary Bible Church since the spring of 2015, when Pastor Glenn asked if I could “just help out for a few Sundays.”

I want to be clear about what this role involves. There is a binder. There are color-coded security tags, a two-part carbon form for new families, a laminated allergy disclosure sheet, and a laminated backup allergy disclosure sheet in case someone spills their coffee on the first one. There is also a sign at eye level that says, in 36-point bold font, Please Fill Out the Allergy Form Before Leaving Your Child.

The Calloway family has not filled out the allergy form since 2017. I know this because I have their original form. Trevor was two. Trevor is now eleven and no longer in the nursery, but their youngest, Becca, has been in my care every Sunday for three years and her form says only “no known issues” in a handwriting that is not a parent’s.

“I have smiled and handed that form across the Dutch door 214 times. I have a log. The log is not for any official purpose. The log is for me.”

“I genuinely love these children,” I told my husband Gerald, 61, last Sunday while reorganizing the tag drawer. “Every single one of them. That is not the point.”

The point is the form. The form exists so that if a child has a peanut allergy, I know about the peanut allergy. This is not a bureaucratic preference. This is a child-safety system that I built from scratch using my own laminating machine.

I have served eleven years. I have never lost a child, a security tag, or my composure. Two of those are true simultaneously at all times.

At press time, a new family had arrived, skipped the form, handed me their infant, and asked if there was Wi-Fi in the nursery.