The Friday Night Date on Twelve Dollars

Tonight, friends, Mark and I had a date. A real date. Without the kids. For under twelve dollars. I am writing this down before it slips into the blur of all our other Fridays because I need to remember it on the days when it feels like we will never get to be the people we used to be again.

Here is what happened. Joanne, our neighbor with the petunias and the pink bathrobe and the husband who passed last spring, has been telling me for months that she would 'just love' to have the kids over for what she calls 'grandma practice.' I have been politely refusing for months because, and you know how this goes, I felt guilty. Guilty for asking. Guilty for needing it. Guilty for being someone who had a perfectly good husband and still wanted three quiet hours with him.

Today I called her at noon and said yes. She nearly squealed.

At five-thirty I walked Emma and Noah and Biscuit across the lawn to Joanne's. She had a card table set up in her dining room with two place settings and grilled cheese and apple slices in the shape of smiles. Noah looked at me as if I had handed him the keys to a kingdom.

I drove to the IGA. I bought a bottle of wine for eight dollars and a wedge of cheese for four. That was the budget. We had crackers in the pantry. We had grapes in the fridge. We had a back porch and a sunset and ninety free minutes.

Mark came home in his work shirt and his boots. I had changed into a soft pink t-shirt and the jeans that make me feel like a person. He looked at me and said, 'What's the occasion?' and I said, 'You.' He laughed, but I meant it.

We sat on the porch with the cheese on a cutting board between us and the candle I made last night burning on the railing — Porch Light, lavender and vanilla, I am very proud of it. We talked about nothing important for the first thirty minutes. The driveway. The chickens Joanne might get. The lawn mower making 'that noise' again. And then somewhere in there we started talking about the actual thing — the next year, the savings goal, his back, my candles, Emma's reading, Noah's stutter that we hope is just a phase and the doctor says probably is.

Nine years married this October. We forget, in the laundry of it, that we used to be two people who chose each other on purpose. The porch reminded us.

I picked the kids up at seven-thirty. Joanne had braided Emma's hair. Noah had fallen asleep on her couch with a stuffed triceratops on his chest. She had a Tupperware of cookies for them to take home and tears in her eyes that she pretended weren't there. I am going to bring her flowers tomorrow.

It's almost six o'clock as I write this, the next day already. The candle is on the counter, half burned. The wine bottle is in the recycling. The kids are at the kitchen table eating apple slices in the shape of smiles, because Emma insisted. Date night for twelve dollars. Mark for nine more years at least. Talk tomorrow. — Lucy