“My eyes! My eyes!”

As a child, I suffered terrible allergies.

One of my most vivid memories is of the fall of either 4th or 5th grade (I remember because of the school in which I was enduring this – the Deerfield school in Lawrence, Kansas, which was newly constructed and featured the very new-fangled and very stupid open classroom model – that is grades 4-6 all grouped in one large, noisy, semicircular space) when my whole head was so stuffed for a couple of weeks, I could barely breathe.

This, despite having been treated for allergies since first grade – I was one of those who got her back and arms marked in a grid, and then pricked with every possible allergen.

(David tells the story of someone he knows who endured the same and whose entire back – every grid- broke out in an inflamed reaction. She was, of course, allergic to the metal in the needle, it turned out.)

My constant companions, indoors and out.

Various grasses, pollens and animals – cats much more than dogs.  I believe I had shots three times a week for a time, then twice, then once – I was supposed to continue them in college, and took a vial with me (all the way across town from Holston Hills to UT), but I think I went to the student health center for a shot one time. For by that point,  nothing really bothered me, and has not in the years since.

Until this spring.  Oh my.

I didn’t know what it was at first – didn’t draw the connection between the eye irritation I was experiencing and the (according to all reports) extraordinarily high pollen count. But I finally did figure it out – not that my realization helped much. I took Zyrtec and Claritin a few times but concluded that the way it dried me out increased the eye irritation. I did drops a bit, but they say to be careful, for..something…happens if you do too many eyedrops.

It’s been pretty difficult, but I think – I really do think – that it’s over now. My eyes are still far more sensitive to light than usual, but I can read and look at a computer screen again without discomfort. I’ll get Joseph and me to an allergist this summer so we can head this off next time.

Not the worst thing in the world, by any means, but still an occasion for thinking things over: about what you take for granted, about how  quickly it could go, even after you swear you will never, ever take anything for granted again.  You think you would have learned that lesson the very hard way, but you see that you really haven’t. How to be able to see clearly and think clearly – without irritation, pain and itching is such a gift.  How you really like the strange thing called writing and perhaps it is worth fighting through the internal and external obstacles and just

keep doing it as long as you can. With that normally good health, how much time and energy you waste.

There were evenings, in particular, in which I really couldn’t read at all.  Read-aloud time was impossible and the Sciascia I finally purchased sat beside my bed unopened.  A couple of nights ago, I thought I could finally manage it, so I cracked open The Wind-Dark Sea and attempted it.

I am normally a very fast reader – probably to my detriment.  I approach books greedily, rushing to get as much as I can from the surface experience, never admitting how much is lost in the race to the end.

It might explain, in part, my love for the Flannery O’Connor quote I have posted above my desk: Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.

But that night, I was forced to read slowly, able to only manage a couple of sentences at a time, having to put the book down and cover my eyes for a bit in between attempts. It took me a good thirty minutes to get through Demotion, a 14-page story  which concerns a Communist party official’s outrage at his wife, Filomena, who is protesting the “demotion” of St. Filomena in the parish church of St. Filomena.  Irony strikes at the end of the story as the husband must hide his own confused anger at the news of the removal of Stalin’s corpse from Lenin’s tomb.

(Above: Michael examine’s Sciascia’s cig in Racalmuto, the writer’s hometown.)

Sciascia is interesting, but I’ll withhold further comment until I’ve read the other two books on deck.

(Yes, I’m still oddly obsessed with Sicily.)

I started this post yesterday, when I was full of hope. Then this morning, the devil pollen struck again and I just had to lie down and close my eyes for a time, after which I looked over the work I had to do and realized that all I could do was think about it. Looking at the screen was too uncomfortable, so what was left was to scan the notes, set them aside, lean back in my chair and think.

Which is not a bad thing, is it? Equipped with the ability to act so quickly, to get the words down and off and out there, to make, to hop in the car and go, it’s probably a blessing to stop and let ideas play together in your head.

And when you can open your eyes again – well.  Who knew?

When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light. I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are.

St. Catherine of Siena, from the 4/29  Office of Readings – her feast.

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