Sometimes you want to stroll up and down the cramped aisles of Bed Bath & Beyond, shopping for tension rods without any tension, picking out curtains without calling curtains on the entire outing because of a stubbed toe or hunger pains or because “no, you can’t crawl into those display beds.”
Sometimes you want to sit across the table, any 2-top table in your neighborhood’s one and only non-chain neighborhood restaurant, and share a plate of nachos while cracking wise about the weirdos in the place; like that hipster in the red skinny jeans and too-tight cardigan atop the ironic 80’s t-shirt, and that chick in the corner with the teased-out bangs she borrowed from 1984.
Sometimes you write the $25 check to your school to help them raise money for their intramural who-cares-what program that allows you and your partner to drop your two kids off for three and a half hours and then not get dressed up for a fancy dinner you can’t afford, not see a blockbuster movie you’ll regret spending $25 on, but instead to do the mundane shit you miss in your relationship since the mini-you and mini-her came along.
There’s grace and humor and life in the prosaic, the everyday stuff done the way you two once did it — hand in hand, cheeky humor on your tongues, and only the perky restaurant host repeatedly calling out your name.
This is what parents really do on a date night.
