On: Date Days

On:  Date Days

Colleen Rogers

My husband and I, now in our 60’s, have a little “Date Day” each Monday afternoon.  A quiet lunch, then some coffee (and maybe dessert) at our favorite Coffee Bar is an “outsourced” pause in our week, during which we just enjoy each other’s company. 

I think about the evolution of our “Date Days” over the thirty plus years we have known each other.   I am grateful for these memories and for the evolution of our time together.  Every couple has their own story, but there are truly commonalities in all of our romances.  When I speak to other couples, I sense a definite continuum in the trajectory of all the “Date Days” in each of our individual relationships.

When my husband and I met in our twenties, for example, our “Date Days” were grand—there were fancy dinners, careful dress-ups, roses, and the lovely vamped excitement of passionate kisses and whispered plans for a next rendezvous.  There was the thrilling roller coaster line of anxiety that coincided with a peek over the cliff-of-future-plans.  The fear of the tentative finality of our connection rode shotgun with the possibility of a significant fork in a life-path. 

In those early days, even a low-maintenance woman like myself stepped up her best-impression-game with an armory of perfumes and lipsticks.  Any less-refined male counterpart decidedly learned to open doors and pull out chairs for their lady fair, and wondered all night if a tie was straight.  Chess pawns we were back then in all these high stakes games of life partner Uno. 

As we (and our friends) finally wed and decided to build

families, many of us balanced child-rearing with “Couple Alone Time”.  We  began to approach “Date Day” as though it were a Getaway Strategy Session at the White House.  Every couple procured a sub (a babysitter or grandparent) who would uphold the family fort in parentis logo.  The sub, of course, required a well-documented Agenda of Expectations. 

Offspring’s bedtimes and snacks were detailed, and fixed House Rules and Codes of Conduct were briefed before a couple’s departure on “Date Day”.  “Date Day” activities generally included drinking and/or absorbing the comforting affirmations of another couple.   This “buddy-couple” provided sound parenting advice and/or humorous barbs about their own family lives and misfortunes.

If couples chose to “go-it-alone” on “Date Day”, the event became a problem-resolution team workshop.  The primary “romantic utterance” whispered at the outing was “what-are-we-going-to-do-about”…  The goal of “Date Day” evolved into an opportunity to work out some of the more pressing household issues without children underfoot.  Finances, home improvement plans, family dynamics, and the soap opera of exes got “hashed out”.

Ultimately, these “Date Days” concluded with a debriefing and report from the subs, a tucking in and checking on children, and an exhausted snuggle snooze in the Parental Boudoir.  So many “Date Days” over the years morphed into “Family Time” without even the whisper of notice or concern.

In our retirement “Date Days”, my husband and I have relished the continuation of the complexities of our coupling.  We recall the fiery passion of our earliest “Date Day” adventures.  We also remember “Date Days” that served to strategize and establish our “home fires”.  So now, in our more subdued and quiet “Date Days”, we review the glowing ember of “together lives” well-lived.