A walk to remember

This is a story that needs to be told. Just from the “oh wow”-ness of it all.

So for those who don’t know, I have twin sons. While Laurie was pregnant, one of them — Lucas — was found to have some pretty significant heart problems. He’s fine now, this is a fun story. But at the time, they knew he was going to need heart surgery close to immediately after birth, and there really wasn’t a place for that in Lexington. They wanted it to happen at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, which is just about the best place in the world for such things (seriously, we got lucky from a location perspective).

But what that meant was that they wanted us to relocate to Cincinnati about a month before the due date so that we’d be near the hospital when we needed to be. And then of course the boys did not want to be born (Laurie ended up having to be induced), so we just lived out of the Ronald McDonald House in Cincinnati for a couple months.

That also meant we got to try some new restaurants.

A friend had given us a gift card to some Asian fusion-y type place that we wanted to try. I drove while Laurie navigated, and while we didn’t see the restaurant, we parked in an area where Laurie was pretty sure the restaurant was. We got out, walked past a Donato’s, started down the street in what she thought was the right direction. Buildings and doors in the neighborhood were woefully poorly numbered, so we had trouble even figuring out if we were on the right block, let alone in the right spot.

At some point — I don’t remember exactly why — Laurie stopped navigating and I brought up the restaurant’s address through a google search on my phone. And that told me Laurie had us in just the wrong spot. It was several blocks away. Remember, at this point she was eight months pregnant with twins. Walking was a heck of a thing. But whatever, it didn’t make sense to drive a few blocks against traffic, we were going to walk.

And so we walked and walked and walked. And we got to the address where Google said the restaurant was, only to find … nothing. It was closed.

I was confused. But Laurie was annoyed. “Why did you direct us here?” she asked. I showed her the address on my phone and shrugged. She clicked the link for the restaurant website, which showed “NEW LOCATION” on it.

The restaurant had moved. Google hadn’t updated. Laurie looked at me with the anger only present in an eight-months-pregnant-with-twins woman who had just had to walk half a mile unnecessarily, and now was going to have to walk back the same distance. It’s a very specific anger, but it’s very recognizable when you see it.

I apologized (even though, and I maintain this, that was Google’s fault, dammit, not mine). We headed back, still not sure where the restaurant was. We walked. We stopped to rest. Her feet hurt. We walked. She complained (utterly understandably; I don’t want for even one second to pretend she was being unreasonable here — this sucked for her in all the ways). We walked. We got back near where we parked, saw the van, saw the Donato’s.

“Do you want to keep looking?” I asked her.

She shook her head. She was done. We went to Donato’s. We ordered little personal pizzas. It definitely wasn’t Asian fusion, but you could do worse than Donato’s when you’ve walked miles and are pregnant and uncomfortable.

Near the end of the meal, Donato’s was slow, just us and the dude behind the counter. “Hey man,” I asked. “We were looking for [X restaurant] and couldn’t find it. Do you know where it is?”

The dude looked at my gift card. He clearly wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s a new restaurant just down the street, but I don’t think that’s it’s name.”

At this point, I was pretty convinced the restaurant had closed outright and we had a wasted gift card. Which sucked more for my buddy Kevin, who had provided the card, than for me, since he was the one out the money. But oh well. We finished our pizza, walked outside, and I decided to investigate the “new restaurant” just down the street the pizza guy had indicated. It was definitely not the name of the place we had been looking for. It was called Lalo. I don’t remember what the gift card said it was called, but not that. But I looked at the menu, and it appeared to be Asian/Latino-y. So I walked in. Got to the host stand. Showed the guy the gift card.

“Is this you?” I asked.

He nodded.

He nodded.

He nodded.

I didn’t even want to step back outside and tell Laurie that. Our car was within 50 feet of the doorway of the restaurant that I had make her walk more than a mile to find. And he nodded.

I told her. How could I not? She understood, while at the same time looking like she would murder the next person who walked within 20 feet of her. We went back to Lalo a few days later, and that shit was amazing. It was so good. (Thanks, Kevin.)

But that is the story of how I almost walked my wife into a divorce.