I’ve begun a third year of immunotherapy (allergy shots). And this is the third post about my experience with this therapy. My ENT suggests his patients make an appointment to see him in his office at the end of each year of regular allergy injections. Last year he performed a procedure in which he numbed my sinuses and explored them with a slim tool inserted up each of my nostrils. He was looking for polyps, and only noticed the remnants of my adenoids. This year, my doctor found a polyp forming in my sinus. He prescribed the over-the-counter nasal sprays, Sudafed and Flonase, to keep the polyp from getting worse. Fatigue from everyday sinus issues inhibits my work production because it’s difficult to concentrate. Rainy days I experience added sinus pressure and something similar to depression that entices me to sleep during the day, adding to my struggle to function and be productive. The doctor agreed that pressure caused by the weather can produce this, and that the medication mentioned above should help with these symptoms too. It’s raining today. My sinuses have taken over most of my face, making it squint, trying to find a comfortable position around dry eyes. I’m contemplating drinking a Mountain Dew to pick me up. But it’s not even ten o’clock in the morning. So onto the pharmacy for Sudafed because I’ve already been using Flonase. I’ll post again about my results at the end of this year, which will be the end (I hope) of my allergies and shots.
Rapidly
keying for eight hours alongside rough-looking city mommas, who also worked the mole shift, I didn’t envy our
supervisor. She presided over rows of tired women who processed data to earn medical
benefits and enough money to pay taxes to the IRS, for whom we typed. The no-nonsense supervisor kept a serious face; our
emotional connection to authority might lessen productivity. But the photos on her desk, next to a radio trailing earphones, made me suspected she was a momma like the rest of us. We worked at night to be available
to our children during the day.
Amongst
the monotonous hours, an occasional chuckle peaked into the air of the vast room. Or, a co-worker’s random hum fell flat on a note from her headset that only she heard. Even though our supervisor didn’t walk the
dark city streets alone from a bus stop to get home each night, she proved her
grit by maintained our large, potentially noisy department.
After years at IRS, I moved to New Jersey’s suburbs. That meant no longer riding public transportation; buses to Jersey stopped running before the late shift ended. My first driving experience came with a dramatic Chevy Nova that refused to run when the mood struck
it. Up and down the lines of IRS keyboards tipped my complains about the testy car.
Empathy showed on the faces of those enduring women as I clunked out of the
gated IRS parking lot alongside their group crossing the boulevard to wait for the bus I once rode with them. The probability of the
Tycony/Palmyra Bridge opening
before I had a chance to cross it was high at that time of the night. My
co-workers threw me a backwards nod as I sputtered onto the dangerous six lane Roosevelt Boulevard.
But the next incident happened traveling from home the following
afternoon.
My Nova stalled before reaching the middle of the
bridge in rush hour traffic. The delicate vehicle didn't do well in the early
September heat. My car's theatrics made me yell: "If I'm late, I’ll get a late slip." The thing was now a
Jersey snob and refused to enter the Philadelphia side of the bridge.
Affronted when a police cruiser
pushed it from behind over the bridge, the fussy car stillagreed to take me the rest
of the way to IRS, knowing I'd return to Jersey after my shift.
Late, I moved fast past the rows of whispering mommas. And approached our supervisor's separate, lone desk. Before I could explain, she grinned and said, "We knew you'd be late. We
heard on the news that there was a disabled vehicle on the northbound side of
the bridge."
Rushing from the parking lot caused
me to swallow a breath before replying, "Oh, yeah, that was me."
My supervisor slapped the side of
her metal desk and I jumped. Her raucous laughter caused the
rows of woman to swivel their heads in
our direction, still clickingtheir keys. Our superior cut off in mid-laugh and resumed
typing, leaving me standing there. So I slunk to my monitor, realizing she
hadn’t asked me to sign a late slip.
As a wedding gift, my best friend
gave Joe and I a calendar to mark the events of our nuptial year. Inside the
calendar I found bright stickers to highlight all the fun, and not-so-fun,
marriage firsts. "Disaster in the Kitchen" pictured a pot boiling
over. But our kitchen disaster had nothing to do with cooking.
Our three room apartment was the top
floor of a row house in Philadelphia. The middle bedroom had been converted to
a breezy kitchen exposed to a hall next to the stairs, our access to the
apartment. An aluminum cabinet, the kitchen's sole means of storage, spanned
the wall above the sink and stove.
Most challenging to unpack into our
compact home, were shower gifts intended for food service and entertaining. At
seventeen, packages of fancy glassware and ceramics overwhelmed me. There
seemed to be so much a couple needed. I didn't remember my mom having these things
while raising me and my four siblings. A place to store the new keepsakes
puzzled me because we had no dining room.
My female in-laws came to the rescue
and amazed me as I watched them make boxes of glasses, dinnerware, serving
plates and mixing bowls disappear into the white cabinet. Their assembly line
stacked and stashed, manipulated and mounted gifts I barely remembered opening
at the shower. I stepped back and said, "That's a lot of weight up
there."
Someone replied, "It's okay.
These cabinets are made to hold a lot." Everyone nodded and smiled at me
with expressions of experience.
Mom's old aluminum cabinets blipped
into my head. They had buckled and become misshapen with the weight of canned
goods. But those cabinets weren't hanging on a wall, over a sink and an
apartment-sized stove, in a rented second floor.
Two months later I came home from
classes at Chestnut Hill College to our cozy apartment love nest. As I tread
the steps, lofty rustling caused me to pause. Odd. Joe was usually at his
second job. A hollow swishing sound met me as I crested the staircase.
Shoeless, Joe was sweeping a crystal
sea of glass dotted with ceramic pieces. The monster cabinet, slumped to one
side, rested in the sink with few things inside its gaping mouth of open
doors.
My in-laws were right. The cabinet
was completely intact. However, one of the metal wall supports, in which it had
hung, had given way when Joe reached for a container atop the sprawling white
unit. Added pressure from him leaning on that side of the aluminum storage
brought down the massive thing. Its doors had flown open, causing a flood of
potential weaponry to cavalcade towards Joe.
Viewing the aftermath, and then my
poor groom's face of concern, I asked, "Are you hurt?"
"No, but a lot of stuff from
your shower got broke."
I laughed, relieved he was okay.
Thirty-four years later, I still remember Joe barefooted in dress pants and open shirt,
broom in hand. His face had made me visualize a future child accidentally
breaking his mom's glassware. So cute, my new husband was doing his awkward
darnedest to support himself and a student wife.
Back then, as I took over the clean
up, it hit me that I could have become a widow. The man was one hundred and
twenty-nine pounds. Only God knows how heavy that cabinet was, full of those
weighty love gifts.
Ever since our catastrophe in the
kitchen, I oh and ah with the rest of the matrons as a future bride opens her
crystal and special serving pieces. I quietly pray that those beautiful things
don't become harmful, along with other material trappings and well-meaning
family, to the new couple who may face disasters that damage relationships.
Our early kitchen experience was a
blessing. It served to remind me to keep in sight what is truly important.
Throughout our years of financial struggle, I never missed those lovely gifts
because I didn’t have time to grow attached to them. When our children came
along, I was saved from yanking them away from toddling babies. Our catastrophe
also taught me not to get upset when something I had grown to enjoy
shattered.
This is a tribute to family and
friends who gave us those presents. Even though we never used them, your gifts
represented confidence in a poor teen bride whom you assured deserved those
elegant breakables. Thank you once again for each one. Your love represented in
those gifts are the treasures I have kept. And that can't be broken.
I write children's picture books. It's important for me to leave a teeny carbon footprint and do the least harm in my garden. I live with my husband and a red-eared slider turtle. I continue to apologize to them both.