I remember it being hard to breathe. Well, I mean I could breathe a little, but it hurt. And my throat felt like someone had taken a cup full of sand from the Serengeti and poured it down my throat. The panic on my aunt and uncle’s face frightened me as my uncle frantically dialed my parents’ number while my aunt ran into the kitchen. I heard the clank and clatter of boxes and bottles in the kitchen with a voice saying, “No, we’re out of it!”
I remember the ceiling fan spinning round and round, that rock fireplace, and the motionless white door. I remember the eternity that I laid there waiting on my parents to come and save me from the pain I was in. They could kiss whatever was wrong with me and make it go away. That eternity that, looking back at it now, didn’t last too long. But to a three-year-old, every second something mundane is hard seems to go on forever.
I remember the static door bursting open and my dad emerging in his black jacket and nice-looking shoes. If this had been a movie and we could have paused this scene, you would have seen smoke behind my father and perhaps a light from heaven shining down like a prince coming at just the right moment to save his princess.
Dad ran to me and picked me up. He was warm and smelled like home.
“It’s going to be okay,” Mom whispered.
The next thing I knew was that we were getting out of the suddenly stopped car at some shop.
It was harder to breathe now. My hand went up to my face. It was hot and felt like playdoh. I wanted to scratch right through it. I felt as if I had ten-ton bricks resting on my shoulders and monsters coming out of the ground grabbing my feet trying to pull me under. What was happening to me?
“Where is it?” said my mom, as she hurridly searched the aisles, my dad following closely behind her carrying me in his arms. We stopped. I looked up to see little boxes on the shelves–except for the shelves right in front of me. By this point, I sounded like a duck trying to quack with a kazoo stuck down his throat.
“How can they not have a single box?”
In a couple of long strides, we arrived at the counter at the front of the store.
“How can I help you?” the person at the counter asked.
“We need some Benadryl, now,” my mom said.
“I’m sorry, we are all out! The next shipment comes in by the end of the week.”
I remember my dad gently slammed me down on the counter and turned me around to reveal my tear-streaked face, red as a sunburn, and as puffy as properly proofed dough. I remember everything being blurry and thinking that my face was going to explode at any moment.
I must have been quite a frightening sight because with the slight mutterance of “Oh!” the person behind the counter ran off and returned a minute later with some pink liquid in a plastic cup and a little bottle of water.
I was told later in life that it almost got to the point where my dad cut a hole in my throat so that I could breathe, but thankfully the pharmacy worker found some Benadryl…
Since this moment, I have tried to keep my distance from cats, but that in itself is an impossible feat.
When I was brought home from the hospital, there was a cat sitting at our front door. As I grew up on Dalton Drive, there was often a cat playing outside my bedroom window. When we moved, our across the street neighbor’s cat would frequent our yard. When I studied in Rome for a month, there were kittens playing outside our dorm window.
One of the kittens outside my dorm room at the Due Santi Campus in Rome.
I have never owned a cat in my life, but there has always been a cat around. And that has been a problem because, for the majority of my life, I have been allergic to cats. But as allergies change over time, so has my allergy to cats. Best I can tell, I am no longer allergic.
Which is good because I now live with a cat. I did put on my application when I was applying to be an au pair that I am slightly allergic to cats but, of course, the first application I got for a host family was a family with a cat. And I really liked the family, so I went with them.
Meet Zora.
She’s named after the main character of a German T.V. show because she has reddish hair like the actress. And they still named her after this character even though this is supposedly a terrible show.
When I first got here, Zora didn’t really trust me, but I think now I’ve gained her trust because she will come and sit in my lap and let me pet her. And one time we took a nap together!
There hasn’t been much adjusting to living with a cat because they do their own thing, but every now and then when I see Zora walking around outside, it makes me miss my dog…
