In my elementary school, we had this no-nonsense P.E. teacher named Mr. Yenny.
He was a tough Colorado sportsman through and through. Whenever a kid would take a direct hit to the face with a playground ball, or do a sliding back-flop dismount off of the monkey bars, Mr. Yenny would always say the same thing:
“Get two sips of water, and you’ll be fine.”
It didn’t seem very comforting when you were the kid with the bashed-in face, or the skid marks on your backside; but it did always work. If you just sucked it up, took a couple of sips from the water fountain, you really did end up being OK.
So I took a page out of Mr. Yenny’s playbook, and I rallied up my strength to get us through another tricky time. Lou was already very weak leading into his bout with food poisoning, so he was really hurting the next morning. He just couldn’t catch a break, though, and I remember feeling really worried about leaving him on his own.
Once things with Lou were more-or-less quiet, I loaded up the SUV with Lou and our suitcases, and then I plugged in the address for our next hotel. For the following three days, Lou and Leslie picked a great resort that was right near the entrance to Alligator Alley (I-75). I had amended my plans slightly so that I could stay with Lou for one night, and then get up super early the next morning to make the three-hour drive across the alley, and then up to Sarasota.
If everything went according to my plan, I could do everything I needed to in Sarasota, and still have time to drive back to Miami all in one day. It was the best I could do, and the reality was, I had to make it work.
So. I took two sips of water to help me suck it up, and then I told myself that Lou would be fine.
I made it to Sarasota the next morning in plenty of time to meet the movers that Lou hired over the phone. We were meeting at our storage unit so they could assess our move before they gave Lou a firm, flat rate price for loading our stuff, driving it to Miami, and then unloading it at our new place. The two guys seemed pretty nice, but they didn’t seem like seasoned movers. They were a little flippant about everything, but I didn’t really question it too much at the time.
When I lifted up the rollaway door to our storage unit, it was even messier than I remembered! Things had shifted, and right away, I spotted a broken lamp that we must’ve shoved in at the last minute.
Frick and Frack — as I started calling them in my head — did a quick eyeball estimate of our stuff, and asked me a few questions about specific items that I knew of that might be of special concern. They seemed to take everything in stride and acted like this move was going to be a breeze. The more alpha of the two — let’s say he was Frick — used a scratch sheet to crunch some numbers, and then he wrote down his official estimate.
Then we called Lou. Lou agreed to the price they quoted, and I signed off on all of the terms they presented. The plan was to leave Frick and Frack with the key to our unit — and the code to all of the storage complex gates. Frick and Frack would load up all of our belongings into their moving truck the next day. Then, Frick and Frack would get an early start the following morning so they could be in Miami around lunchtime to start unloading our things into our new place.
I clearly explained to these movers that we only had the freight elevator reserved for that one specific day at our new place, so we really had to count on them to arrive on time. Frick assured me this would be “no problem.”
Everything seemed square, so I signed the invoice, and I said goodbye. The rest of the day was a blur of running quick errands and such so we could officially close out our life in Sarasota, and start a brand new one in Miami.
On my drive back to Miami, I called Lou and he sounded terrible. He had been running a fever all day, and the bladder spasms were killing him. A rogue wave of left-over food poisoning had also hit him hard — which made us wonder if maybe Lou really had the flu. Lou hadn’t mentioned any of this to me when I spoke to him all throughout the day, but I guess as I was getting closer to Miami, he didn’t want me to be blindsided when I got back to the room.
There really wasn’t much I could do to help Lou other than to arrive with some Gatorade and a few cleaning supplies for a quick tidy up. I felt horrible that he’d been suffering on his own for the whole day, but he was right not to tell me sooner. I already hated leaving him in the first place, but we just had to be so practical all the time in those days. I kept reminding myself that in less than three days, Lou and I would have a home — and it would be our home, and I could make it perfect, and clean, and cozy…
