I have heard it said that the sweetest emotion is relief. In fact, I have said it myself, that there’s almost no feeling more delicious than coming out of a bad dream to find yourself in your own bedroom, not naked, not unprepared for a test, not driving a car with no brakes or trying to stuff two dozen hamsters into a broken-zippered backpack (don’t ask).

But let me tell you: waking up from a nightmare, feeling the pain of a barked shin or a headache subside…these things pale beside the uncomplicated joy of realizing that, after three days of head-cold misery, you can finally taste things again.

The first cold of the season arrived last week and filled my entire sinus cavity with reinforced concrete, and it didn’t seem like a particularly bad cold — although it’s [honk] taking its sweet time [haaaahhhhnk] leaving — I could not taste anything for three days. Not one thing. Usually, when I have a cold, I can vaguely taste things, or sort of work off the memory of tasting them based on the fact that I’ve eaten them before, or I work something out involving Afrin and/or blowing my nose after each bite so I can get the occasional (albeit muffled) gust of taste. Not this time. I tried Afrin; I tried Afrin more often and in higher doses than the bottle recommended, and it helped with the stuffiness (although I should probably be writing this from rehab), but I still couldn’t taste anything. I tried blowing my nose between each bite, I tried gulping an entire mug of scalding tea before eating, I tried peppering the living shit out of a bowl of pea soup…nothing. Nada. I could feel the pepper in every nerve ending of my lips, but I couldn’t taste it. Or the pea soup. Or anything else, for three days.

I couldn’t really smell anything either, obviously, which, as the other cat owners in the crowd can tell you, is a state of affairs that has certain things to recommend it, because I got up on Sunday morning and shuffled sleepily into the bathroom to pee, and the cats got up and shuffled sleepily into the bathroom also, because God forbid I do anything without a feline serving as the official witness, and Hobey clambered into the kitty litter, and what should awaken me more effectively than a double shot of espresso a few seconds later but the unmistakable stench of an uncovered poo. I reacted in my customary fashion — spluttering, gagging, groaning of the “why, when I am trapped in here with you, WHY, WHY?!” variety, rushing out of the bathroom yanking my drawers up around me — and not until my flight ended in the kitchen did I realize that I had recognized and reacted negatively to a scent. Hallelujah! I had smelled something! True, the something I had smelled had nearly made me barf, but still — if I could smell poo, I could probably smell coffee, and if I could smell coffee, I could taste coffee as well. Sweet, sweet coffee! With milk! And two misshapen blobs of sugar!

I started the coffee, and while it brewed, I fixed the cats their breakfast, and I do not ordinarily enjoy the smell of compressed extruded former seafood first thing in the morning, but on that morning, I stuck my nose right up next to the gelid alleged catfish in the Iams can and inhaled deeply. It smelled disgusting. I almost cried from relief. Then I enjoyed one of the top five cups of coffee of all time. It had a few coffee-grounds bits in it, and I went a little overboard with the milk (which you’d better believe I smelled very carefully also, as I do every morning when I have a functioning nose, to make sure it hasn’t gone off, and it’s kind of a gacky smell because I don’t like milk at all except to make coffee and mashed potatoes with, but oh, how I’d missed the gack), and the coffee kept burning my tongue because I’d scorched all my taste buds with a half-inch of pepper the other night, but still. Top five. Filling out the top five: the four cups I had after that, just to revel in the sensation.

Everything I’ve eaten in the last couple of days, I’ve really enjoyed. No…I’ve really enjoyed it, occasionally to the bafflement of people around me. The Couch Baron and I went bowling yesterday, and after I covered myself with pathos in Lane 24 (how is it possible to possess four fully functional limbs and eyesight good enough to operate a motor vehicle and still bowl a 54? I don’t know how, but I do know it’s possible), I got a large order of fries for the road. Melody Lanes does not offer a particularly noteworthy fry; it’s your standard medium-well-done crinkle-cut jobby, but the fact that I could distinguish between a French fry and a lump of dirt or a pipe cleaner taste-wise vaulted that particular group of starchy sticks into hall-of-fame territory. I chowed the entire bucket in ten blocks.

Did I need to eat dinner after eating the equivalent of an acre of potatoes (and oil, and salt) at four o’clock? Not really, but eat it I did. I fixed a virtuous salad composed of mesclun, mushrooms, red onion, chickpeas, and Thousand Island dressing, and had my head fit into the bowl, I would have licked it afterwards. I had tried for days to awaken my sense of taste by putting fat slices of raw onion on everything from toasted cheese to oatmeal, to no avail, and now that I could taste it, I didn’t even mind the tears streaming down my cheeks.

I almost wrote Starbucks a letter thanking them for the unbelievable slice of iced lemon loaf I ate at lunch today. It’s the same iced lemon loaf they always have; it’s the same iced lemon loaf I’ve had dozens of times. But today, I truly appreciated the melody of the spongy, tangy cake and harmony of the chewy, sweet icing for the first time.

It probably sounds drama-queeny, this rave reviewing of everyday foods, but one day without the sense of taste is de rigueur for a cold, and since I spend most of that day sleeping and blowing my nose, I don’t have time to eat, or much energy, so I don’t miss it. But on the third day in a row, it’s beyond annoying and into surreal. I don’t know why I bothered with the tea bags after a while, since any benefit came from the steamy water and I couldn’t taste the tea at all. I do know why I bothered putting mustard on my cheese sandwiches — the vain hope that Grey Poupon fumes would penetrate the fog — but I didn’t drink a Diet Coke for three days; I couldn’t taste it, and the fizz just hurt my throat. Now, I savor it, just as I savored an entire box of orange Tic-Tacs yesterday. In one bite. Mmm, orange Tic-Tacs. And hello to you, lime Tic-Tacs.

The only problem: now I crave every food I see, because I know I can taste it…including meats. I haven’t given a Whopper a second thought in years, literally, but this afternoon I caught myself reminiscing about one I’d eaten in college. I came up the stairs today and smelled someone cooking some kind of beef stew, and I’ve lived perfectly happily without beef stew since 2002, but tonight, I longed for the carrots and the onion chunks and most of all the cow. I settled for a delicious spinach and mushroom ravioli, and I don’t regret it, but I don’t regret standing out in the hall, keys in hand, and recalling my mother’s beef burgundy for a full minute, either.

I don’t cook, really; I can, but I don’t, most of the time, because it takes too long and blah blah, and I make an effort to eat square meals and so on and so forth, but I’d gotten used to thinking of food as kind of a chore — all that prep time and gone in fifteen minutes, and then the clean-up, who needs it, I’ll just go to the corner for a slice. But when I couldn’t taste anything, when I could go to the corner for as many slices as I wanted and not one of them would leave a lasting impression on my tongue, I started fantasizing about all the yummy meals I would cook when I could taste again — all the snacks I would enjoy, all the drinks I would nurse, all the careful chewing I would do in lieu of wolfing things down at my desk. It’s important to enjoy food; it’s important to appreciate the little things.

I’ve got a Vienna-Fingers-and-coffee break planned for later, and if anyone calls during it, I won’t pick up the phone.

October 3, 2005

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