date night in the time of parenting
do you believe in love after kids?
The sun also rises, sure, but not just yet.
The sun sleeps, for now.
But the daughter?
She has risen.
My job is to get her back to sleep, and I have tried everything, by which I mean the only thing that sometimes (rarely) works - tiptoeing into her room, going ‘shhh’ without making eye contact, finding the pacifier she’s dropped underneath her crib, and bringing it to her tiny mouth only to realize she’s got one in there already, dangling from her lips like a mobster’s cigar.
Yet still, she cries.
Here, this mission enters its most dangerous phase: extraction.
I gently place her down into the crib, back out of the room, slowly, whisper, ‘go back to sleep it’s okay,’ and, upon the threshold, turn and sprint out, shoulders scrunched, face wincing like a bomb is about to go off because —
There it is. The wails of the forgotten.
This is hard, and lately it’s been getting harder. Every morning is Groundhog Day, and every day, our little 14 month old Emma June (EJ) shoots up out of the dirt and - what’s this? that’s no groundhog, that is an unwell donkey braying and wailing and - wait, what’s this now? for some reason the donkey is pretending to be a leaf-blower that just won’t start - reeerhh, reerh, reeerh.
Rerh.
Through the black and white of our CCTV monitor, I see a pair of wide open raccoon eyes staring back at me, fighting the sleep.
I nearly snap my Kindle in two, but - and this is important - I don’t, because I'm an adult, unlike someone else I know.
Don’t get me wrong - I love her. Besides the crying and screeching (another essay, soon), she’s a great hang. Her signature move—slowly backing herself up into me, looking over her shoulder like she’s parallel parking an unfamiliar vehicle, and plopping her butt into my lap— gets me every time. 10/10 no notes.
But this? Come on. Have you no shame? You don’t! Babies have no shame and this, I feel, is a problem. Me on the other hand? I am shame.
Going in will only make things worse, now and forever, so I let her cry.
Sitting up in staunch rebellion, she falls asleep, finally toppling over, slo-mo style, like a giant beast finally slain.
It is done, I think, like an idiot, because she’s back up again, risen anew like Emma June Christ.
We spend the next hour doing a shot-for-shot reenactment of the Black Night sketch from Monty Python. Tis but a flesh wound, she says, getting up, again and again and again.
This would suck on any day, but it especially sucks today because today is date night day. We have a sitter coming and everything, and now I’m gonna be a tired cranky mess and Lauren will hate me and leave me and oh my sweet god, Emma June’s asleep.
Valhalla, how are ya? I’ve arrived, finally, to the promised land, ready to enjoy the fruits of my - “DAAAAD!!!”
Wilder is up.
As per his request, I rub his tummy and, tired beyond recognition, try to fall asleep next to him but NO, he’s not tired. He wants to read “I Am A Baby.”
Every page follows the same format - cause and effect, on full display:
I am not sleepy.
I am not sleepy because I am a baby.
Mommy is sleepy.
Mommy is sleepy because I am a baby.
Except Wilder is not a baby, he is a god damn adult toddler, thrashing about like there’s Flubber escaping his body by any limb necessary.
And me? I am dead.
I am dead because I am a daddy.
Nope.
I am not dead.
I am not dead because I am a daddy.
Tis but a flesh wound, all this no sleep and sore body knee pain shoulder pain back pain yeah I’m definitely dying.
How did I get here, waking up every morning already worn down, bucket full, gas empty, helpless and hopeless and guilty about both?
Why is this all so hard? And where did the day go? I still need to write and work and—fuck, it’s time for date night.
“date night”
We sit in the car, dazed, confused, unsure of where or how to eat.
Earlier, Lauren sent a few options via text - Asian and something else yummy. I sent a few back - places that had salads. I can't let myself go nuts and eat whatever I want because I'll feel bad, emotionally during and physically after. Emotionally after too, like I've done something wrong.
We go to one of the salad places. The vibe is ‘overpriced Americana for parents of suburbia,’ but it’s Asheville so they have weird sodas instead of diet coke.
I order the arugula salad with chicken. Lauren gets the catfish. The menus are gone and we stumble into the hard stuff first – taxes and money and freelance income, oh my.
Taxes because it's tax time, money because it's always money time. Freelance income because my full time stint at Sublime ends in three days.
She says she's worried about it, which is both true and sucks to hear. Hard not to feel guilty, even though we both think it's the right thing to do. At least I think she thinks that?
Somehow the food has come and gone - fine, all around. Our waitress asks if we’re thinking about dessert.
Thinking about it, sure.
She talks us through the options with a passion that can only be described as sultry: “chocolate pot de creme - semi-sweet chocolate ganache, whipped creme, flan with fresh raspberries, a classic tiramisu and bread pudding with tart cherries and orange butterscotch.
She leaves.
“I feel like we’ve already eaten it, given how committed her read was,” I say.
Lauren laughs and agrees and somehow, maybe, we’re back.
Driving home, windows down, holding hands, we cruise.
This is one of our love languages, the hand holding, especially when we’re sitting next to each other. Standing up, our lack of height differential makes holding hands awkward. Not impossible, but not ideal. Sitting. Now that’s ideal.
Weirdly, I feel relaxed?
I feel relaxed because…we are connected?
We park about half a block from our house. Unencumbered, we walk the same loop that we'd walk with the kids like we’re cheating on our old life with this new one.
Our pace—unhurried yet purposeful—feels like we're breaking land speed records compared to the geological crawl we've grown accustomed to. A strange sound surrounds us.
Silence.
“What are you thinking about?” Lauren asks, which is what we ask each other when we worry the other is in their head about something.
I’m caught off guard because I’m honestly not thinking anything.
“I have this fear that we’re not talking enough or something,” she says.
I can hear myself thinking and - wait, I can hear myself thinking! This, I tell Lauren, this very thing - the wide open expanse to think my thoughts without needing to respond or reprimand or worry - is what feels so nice.
Finally, I tell her, I can enjoy how it feels inside my own mind without guilt, without shame, if only for a moment.
“Right…it feels like a spa day for our minds,” she says, and I agree.
We bask in how loud the silence can be.
a lotus, white
We’re on the couch now watching White Lotus, laughing at the rich. Holding hands again, we melt into one another. It’s like sex but better.
This, here, now, is making love.
But what are we making? You make bread, or mistakes, but how do you make love? Erich Fromm says love is a verb, but that dude never had kids.
For parents, love is all of the verbs, all of the time.
Here, for us, love becomes an antiverb. Do nothing, the Daoists said, and everything gets done. Now those guys musta had some kids.
Mommy and daddy are love.
Mommy and daddy are love because they are connected.
On the TV, Walton Goggins begrudgingly does his first meditation session at a resort in Thailand. The instructor asks when he last felt relaxed.
He thinks, then says “never,” and I nod in agreement - yep, same here. Me and Walton Goggins, the same guy. Maybe relaxing is something you do after the kids are adults and out of the house. Then we’ll do nothing but sit around and reminisce, laze and miss, but those times are not yet because right now its 1031pm fuck I need to go to sleep.
The next morning
The sun also rises, sure, but not just yet.
The sun sleeps, for now.
But the daughter?
She has risen once more.
And so has the father.
Emma June cries for an hour, just like yesterday, but much to my surgrin (surprise+chagrin), I don't mind.
Daddy doesn’t mind.
Daddy doesn’t mind because Daddy and Mommy are connected.
After an hour of ‘tis-but-a-scratch’-ing, EJ stumbles back into slumber. I write for ten minutes on the couch before joining her in the land of the snooze, soft and warm and "DAAAAD!!!"
Like a tiny foghorn, Wilder’s voice booms through the house. “Can you rub my tummy?” he asks.
I comply.
Laying down next to him, I notice he delicate dance his arms and legs make, each limb making contact with a different part of me — a foot on my leg, his arm up by my head, never resting, like he’s scanning my person to make sure he’s as connected as possible.
Emma June does the same thing, picking at my hand with her little sausage fingers, grabbing and holding and grabbing some more, making sure I’m really there, like a dream she can’t believe is real.
Just one day ago, all of these events – my writing interrupted, my sleep fractured, my body contorted on a child's bed—would have been further proof of the hellscape of my life. My schedule, my plans, laid to waste, yet again.
But today, I feel overjoyed – light, a feather; flight, a bird.
So wait - if the events of yesterday and those of today were the same, and all that changed was my connecting with Lauren, then…?
My conclusion may seem obvious but I believe is quite profound — the kids were never the issue. The problem was the story I was telling myself, and the lack of connection that brought forth that story.
Remember that scene in White Lotus when I thought, “I never relax”? I was literally relaxing in that very moment!! At ease on the couch with Lauren, melting into her Dave Matthews Band style, my thoughts still said, “yep, there’s me on the TV just like ol’ Goggins, broken like bread after fasting.”
I get so attached to the negative stories — I’m always the guy with the clenched Kindle. I never get to finish a thought. I can’t even hold hands standing up. I’m failing. I never get it right. I can’t be what they need—that I miss what is literally happening in my actual life — a woman I love more than anything asks what I’m thinking and actually wants to know, while two tiny humans refuse to let me go, both saying in the language of limbs a truth that transcends words: you’re here, and that’s more than enough.
Maybe I’m not failing. Maybe I’m just tired.
.
Daddy is tired.
Daddy is tired because Daddy is happy.
Daddy is happy because Mommy is smiling.
Mommy is smiling because the kids are asleep.
The kids are asleep because they’ve brayed and been belly-rubbed.
They’ve brayed and been belly-rubbed because they are EJ and Wilder.
They are EJ and Wilder because we are Mommy and Daddy.
We are Mommy and Daddy because one day we held hands,
standing up, heights be damned,
and said yes to a life we didn’t understand.
And now we’re here.
On the couch.
Hands still held.
Somehow, it’s enough.
Even without dessert.
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leztalkaboutit
For parents specifically:
What’s your ideal date night?
How much of the date night do you spend talking about the kids?
How do you recover when a rare date night gets derailed by parental exhaustion?
Any grandparents in the house? What’s date night look like for y’all?
For the child-free:
How many parent essays can you read before you want to throw your phone into the sea?
Seriously I worry a lot about this — how can I tell whether I am talking about kids too much? Usually I just say “is this really annoying?”
What are your date nights like? Are they also tedious and boring bc we’re all just tedious and boring?
I have zero children but I love reading about your escapades in parenting dw
Also, you have this way of seeing things most people don't see or won't notice, and then describing those things in SUCH detail it's like each post is a lil Ghibli snapshot - I think that's your edge
You nailed it. It all came flooding back to me, more than thirty years later. One enduring memory from those days is reading to my daughter before her bedtime when we had friends over who I wanted to get back to. Read the book. Turn out the light. Cuddle/spoon until she falls asleep. But the trick was that if I didn't 100% relax and let go of my urgency to get back to the living room, she'd never fall asleep. So I had to empty my mind of my deep need to socialize, and completely relax. But then *I'd* fall asleep.
Looking back, I wish I'd been less frustrated by all of it. But that's hard to do when you're in it because it's all-encompassing and feels like it'll be that way FOREVER. But it won't. I've now lived a couple of decade's worth of looking back on all of it. I wish I'd been more present, at the time.
It doesn't matter. It's all normal and human. Everything I did and didn't do then, everything I'm doing and not doing now. BOTH ARE TRUE.
And why shouldn't people who don't have kids read about the perspective of someone who has kids? Same as... why shouldn't men read a woman's perspective? That's what you get from reading. DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES.