My husband retired from 28 years in law enforcement, and as a celebration, we booked our dream trip to Italy and Switzerland for September 2024. We planned for over ten months, talking about the tour and looking up pictures of the cities we would visit. Milan, St. Moritz, Como, Verona, Bellagio, Bergamo, Riva del Garda, places one dreams about while watching travel programs.
As the time approached for our adventure, so did Hurricane Helene. Living in Southwest Florida is paradise – until it isn’t. We were both raised in our seaside town and lived with the specter of storms since childhood, but nothing compared to the 2024 hurricane season.
We spoke with our families and decided that our trip to Italy, coincidentally over my birthday, should go ahead. Helene be damned. Our flight out of Tampa was one of the last ones allowed before the airports were closed. We sat on the tarmac for an hour waiting out the lightning hoping to make our connection in Paris the next morning. The relief when we landed in time for the next flight was joyous, until there was a security threat in the wing that held our connection. Hundreds of people were herded in a circuitous route around Charles de Gaulle airport to come at the terminal from another direction, except that route held another customs and security checkpoint. Standing in the long line I saw a plane take off out the window and joked that I’d bet that was our flight. I should’ve put money on it.
At the airline desk we dealt with a lovely woman who spoke about as much English as we did French, and she booked us on the next available flight to Milan, six hours later. When the exhaustion finally got the best of us, we found a cozy corner and my husband spent his first few hours in Europe asleep on the floor of the Paris airport.
Eventually arriving in Milan later that evening we took a cab to our hotel and collapsed in relief that the vacation could finally begin in earnest. The next evening, while Helene battered our hometown, we took a tour through downtown Milan, passing through the park and by the opera house, the art museum, and the Duomo. The weather was clear as we strolled hand in hand through the romantic city and tried not to constantly check our cell phones for reports from the kids. Finding out that all our family was safe, our homes still stood, and none were flooded, was a relief that brought tears to my eyes. We had damage and trees down but nothing structural. It felt like a birthday miracle. On my birthday, the following day, we took a train ride through the Italian Alps into the Swiss Alps to St. Moritz, a town so beautiful it took our breath away. It was a glorious day marred only by my husband’s nagging cough. We chalked it up to the weather changes from Florida to Italy to the top of the Alps, which was flurried with snow while we took pictures wearing thin coats.
The stoic deputy, who’d spent his life serving and protecting, decided not to tell me about the fever until he woke me at midnight with shakes so hard that he fell out of the bed. Covid had joined the party. In no good conscientious could he join the tour for the next couple of days since he was very ill and several of the tour members were elderly. So, early the next morning, I booked him our room in Milan for the extra days, waved goodbye from the doorway, and took his romantic retirement vacation by myself.
The rest of the group lauded his thoughtful decision and took me under their wing. With a stiff upper lip, I took lots of photos to share, went on two boat tours, walked beautiful cities, had solo lunches, sipped wine at a local winery, and made friends for life. When we arrived back in Milan he was standing on the sidewalk with open arms – and a face mask.
We were able to spend another day together in Milan enjoying the town, food, and made the very best of a bad situation. On the final evening, while packing up, I started coughing. I coughed my way through the cab ride to the airport, check in, and security, while wearing a mask and trying not to make it obvious that I was ill. It wasn’t until take off that the fever took hold. I shook with fever, only stopping to blow my nose, for the eight-hour flight to New York. As we walked the long hallway to customs, the fever decided enough was enough and finally broke, leaving me sweating, pale, and resembling a drug addict needing a fix. My husband feared he’d be accused of human trafficking. Holding his badge in his hand, just in case, we made it through customs without incident and onto our plane home.
We pulled into the house after midnight, and the next morning he surveyed the hurricane damage while I slept. Lots of debris, and mess, and one tree branch sticking through our porch roof like a stripper pole, but all in all not too bad. When I finally woke up, he sat beside me in bed and after apologizing (again) for getting me sick, he told me to get more rest because in three days’ time Hurricane Milton was coming straight for us.