I’m dating
again. A quick evening out to get ice cream. A bike ride through the park.
Loosely held hands and affectionate glances. I’m not exclusive with any of the
four people I date, and that’s what makes it exciting and fresh each time. What
does my husband of 13 years say about my dating? He’s very supportive. Mostly,
because he’s dating, too.
Bill and I
have started a new tradition of scheduling dates with our children and each
other. Like most good ideas, this one was born out of frustration. A few months
ago, when we had our foster daughter living with us in addition to our own
three children, we noticed that while we did a lot together as a family,
sometimes we’d come home from an excursion tired and cranky. Jacob, 12 couldn’t
tell us anything without Jamie, three, interrupting. Liam, eight, sometimes
felt that it was hard to get through a few sentences without Jacob (the fact
checker) clarifying his story for him. In addition, something about being strapped
into their car seats inspired Jamie and our foster daughter, both preschoolers,
to sing endless rounds of Old MacDonald.
One night,
after an especially tiresome ride home (here an oink, there an oink, everywhere
an oink, oink), Bill strode over to the family dry-erase calendar and started
writing.
“What are
you doing?” I asked with alarm. Our calendar was already too full.
“I’m
writing down dates with the kids,” Bill said. “I’m afraid that otherwise, we’ll
never get to talk to them.”
It was a bad
idea, I thought. We could barely get the kids to the events we had already
committed to — school, soccer, baseball, piano, swimming lessons — how could we
add any more?
My first
date was scheduled for the following night, with Liam. It had been an extremely
busy day at work. I was exhausted, and if truth be told, I was hoping that
perhaps Liam wouldn’t notice his name on the calendar and Bill would forget
about the new plan.
“I’ll clean
the kitchen, you go on your date,” Bill said, after dinner. I paused and looked
at him. I hadn’t realized dating excused a parent from kitchen duty. Perhaps
this was a good idea, after all.
I had
received a laptop computer from work that day and Liam and I decided that he
would be the first person in our family to try it with WiFi. We went to a local
coffee shop and as Liam slurped his frothy drink, I sipped a decaf and
together, we figured out how to connect with the shop’s wireless system so he
could play an online game. As he played, he explained the game to me, and
allowed me to try it, too. After a few rounds, we put the computer away and
Liam told me what he was learning about volcanoes in school. Since our family
fact checker wasn’t there, I couldn’t be certain that Liam had it absolutely
right, but everything sounded reasonable, and it was far more than I knew about
volcanoes before the date.
We both
came home happy, and the kitchen was clean.
In the
months that have followed that first date, the kids have come to anticipate
when their dates are and make sure the date happens, even if the day is already
packed with activities. Probably because we’re not a family prone to a lot of
treats out, our kids are satisfied with pretty simple dates. Liam has clarified
that for him, a date must involve “a special kind of food or drink,” but Jacob
allows foodless dates. One of Jacob’s
favorites was when he and I went to a sporting goods store to buy the
cleats he needed for baseball. Normally, an errand like that would be done with
Jamie or Liam in tow. Turning it into a date, though, made it a time to talk to
Jacob about baseball. I got to see his thought process as he tried on different
sizes and styles of cleats. If Jamie had been with us, Jacob would have been
trying on the shoes alone, and I’d have been chasing after her, rather than
talking to him.
Dates can
happen at home, too, we’ve determined, as long as there are no other family
members in the room. Bill woke Liam up early one morning for a pancake
breakfast date before school. Once, when we didn’t have time to get a
babysitter for our date, Bill brought home Chinese food and he and I had the
date in the dining room. The kids, having been on many dates by that point,
understood what it was all about and played in another room without
interrupting. “Mommy and Daddy are having a date,” I heard Jamie telling her
doll, “so you’ll have to wait to talk to them.”
Newly
acquainted couples naturally understand the value of time spent alone together,
talking. We would question the seriousness of a couple who only spent time together
while in a group. How can you really know each other if you’re never alone
together? We would ask. But the same is true with relationships in a family, I
believe. How can we truly know each of our children if we don’t spend time with
each apart from the others? Jamie is a different person when she is allowed to
be “Just Jamie” alone with Bill or me, and not “Jamie, the little sister” when
she’s with her brothers. Similarly, I
am a different mom when I am — if only for a half hour-- the mom of just one child, not of three. I
have a better sense of humor alone with one child. For once, I’m not a
disciplinarian or a referee. I’m Mom, the companion, not Mom, the director.
It’s a side of myself I’m happy to see — a side I suspected was there.
Thanks to
my husband, I’m back in the dating scene. I’m enjoying the ice cream, the rides
in the park and the excitement of learning new things about these people I
love.
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