Bad Reactions

Growing up, I never had allergies. Sure, South Texas has its share of terrible histamine-tempting substances -- mold, dust, weeds -- and bats, as poor Owen will attest -- but none of them ever got to me. (There were the sinus infections every time we got a coldfront, but that's neither here nor there.) Cats, dogs, small critters, Easter lilies, all fine by me. I can't even recall a food allergy I've had ever since two-year-old me reconciled her differences with pineapples.

Four years in Massachusetts passed uneventufully as far as my respiratory system was concerned. The snow melted, everything burst into bloom, and my attention stayed focused largely on the wonder and glory of that phenomenon of seasons (there's four of 'em! who knew?). My first New Jersey spring, too, came and went merrily, if a bit earlier in the year.

The second spring here, however, I noticed that a cute little clover across the ground had pushed up white buds. I also noticed I was coming down with a cold -- only no cold ever came. For a week I was suspended, head muffled, throat itching, muscles aching, caught in some sort of grim pre-illness limbo, wondering what terrible sin(s) I had committed to land me here.

Gosh, said Ashlea, that sounds like you have allergies!

...Come again? said I.

After a couple weeks of misery, I got my reprieve, unexpectedly as the initial onslaught. I dodged all manner of infirmities last year right up until June, when I spent most of the first two weeks' worth of my job training sniffling and croaking and abusing my tissue privileges, fearing all the while I was getting sick right up until the symptoms disappeared on their own.

I mention all this because I am home sick from work today, partly because I took a friend of mine to the airport at 4:45 this morning (then came home and slept until noon), but partly because I feel like I'm getting a cold. Except I've felt like I've been getting a cold since Monday, with a perpetually stuffy head and sore body, which has neither gotten better nor necessarily gotten worse. I'm hoping against all hope that this is just a cold I've been successful in fighting, and not the first onset of allergies. I can't tell! I haven't had allergies for enough of my life to know reliably what they feel like! But I do know that spring's barely started up here -- there aren't even many green sprouts on the ground, to say nothing of buds on the trees -- and if this is the beginning of a trend that's going to continue for the next three-odd months, July can't get here fast enough.