Yesterday I went to work with the weight of the world on my shoulders and guess what happened? My back seized up.  In my life I’ve never felt pain like this.  I made it home and into bed but despite my best efforts I couldn’t get up.  Even rolling onto my side took 8 distinct arm, leg and chin movements.  I lay there for 8 hours until Rachel came over with drugs, pizza and sympathy.  The drugs helped me get up to pee and the pizza was the first thing I’d eaten all day but it was the sympathy I enjoyed most.

“You’re really lucky to be closing tomorrow,” she said.  And she would have been right if she was speaking to a sane person.  I remembered that I had 500 lbs of meat coming today and no one to receive it.  After a poor night’s sleep I hobbled into work where the meat truck was waiting.  I opened the beer keg hatch and received box after heavy box of briskets.  I then rinsed the cure off a batch of meat and carried carrying Rubbermaid garbage bins 1/4 full with water back and forth to the cool room.  After that I carried cabbages upstairs, shredded them and returned them downstairs.  Then I bought and roasted a box of chicken bones for stock which is now gently simmering on the stovetop.  Before leaving to do some shopping I set up a batch of mustard to ferment overnight and I’ll go in early tomorrow to make soup and mustard. 

In between and during each of these tasks I gave apologies and explanations to disappointed customers. This is my least-favourite thing to do.  Responses ranged from understanding to incredulous. 

When I told Rachel about my day she got upset at me.  ”You have to take better care of yourself,” she said (and she really has no idea how heavy the boxes or water pails were either).  She even made threats I won’t repeat. But she is right.  I’ve hired a couple of new people and hope to be able to resume my morning JCC workouts and then be at the deli from at least noon to 8 or 10 daily.  A dead deli man is no good to anyone except the worms and his detractors (redundant?).

In any case I’m obviously driven, although not so much by the fear of failure as the desire to succeed in my dream of bringing a great deli back to this wonderful city’s downtown core.  I often fantasize about my Nana and Papa and my Bubby and Zaidy sitting in my deli (of course not at the same table because they didn’t care for each other).  I told a friend the other day that I want to create the best deli this city has ever seen.  This my vision.  I want a dining room with a stage and a catering business with a truck. I want to see families and hear their laughter.  I want to experience the delicious silence of fressers fressing. There will be hiccups and hang-ups.  There will be bumps and slumps and growing pains. But if I were a betting man, sore back and all: I wouldn’t bet against me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Caplanskys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.