Pass the limburger cheese please

Every May, usually around Mother's Day, I get a week long allergy attack. The sneezing, the runny nose, the watery eyes, the upgrading to softest tissues I can find. There were a number of years where my Mom and my sisters and I would go to a Mother's day brunch together. The food spread was always wonderful. As we would eat, I would hear everyone talk about how marvelous the food was, but I could not share that joy. My allergies were so bad that I couldn't smell or taste anything less toxic than limburger cheese.

Yes, you could almost set your calendar to it. In an effort to not take medicine unless it was absolutely necessary, I tried herbal supplements. I can't say if they did or didn't work; they probably did something.

There was a funny thing about my allergies this year. I hardly got them. There was one Saturday where it seemed like the bomb went off. My eyes got itchy. My nose started running to the point where I had to stuff tissues in the nostrils just to keep from having to use them so much. "Well", I thought, "here we go with the allergies this year". I stuck to my guns about no medicine, put a pile of tissues on my night stand and went to bed. By the next day, it was done, and I am sure that the pollen is still in the air. My friends are all complaining about their symptoms.

The biggest change in my life over the last year and a half is the limited intake of food with gluten. Could this have a connection? I think it does. The less offenses your body has to ward off within itself, the more strength you have to repair yourself. It seems like pretty easy logic to me. We'll see how I fare next Mother's Day and whether I can smell the limburger cheese or not.