THE DOMESTIC
On attempting a Valentine’s date night
Arranging a date night is wildly different when you’re a few years and a couple of kids into marriage. With Valentine’s Day looming, Himself and I — desperate to get away from the demanding, high-maintenance humans we’ve spawned — decided to break with tradition and mark the occasion for once.
Herself categorically stated, after I informed her of the new baby’s impending arrival, that I could forget about her ever babysitting two kids at the same time, and I’ve grudgingly accepted this. So began a hunt for a babysitter. The first question was which kid to farm out to a stranger. Yer Man is a toddler and would probably bully any well-meaning teenager sourced from the locale.
I pictured the sensitive teen cowering behind a couch while Yer Man hazed him or her with his fourth consecutive hour of “B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his namo”. At least the infant is fairly immobile and marginally less adept at crushing someone’s gentle spirit.
I felt I detected a slight shudder in Herself when I told her she’d gotten Yer Man in the baby Lotto, but with a night out so close I could practically taste the cocktails, I chose to ignore her pained expression. “Is he still on that song about the dog? Dingo?” she ventured. “What song?” I feigned ignorance, “you’ll have a great time. Now what time will I bring him over? Six? Half five?”
Parental dates have to start quite early, I find, as one needs to get mildly tipsy by 7pm, to have cleared the hangover by 10pm and be home feeling refreshed and ready for the 11pm feed. It’s a precision operation of timing, carb-loading and never, ever mixing drinks.
Preceding the date, an email thread worthy of coordinating a multi-day destination wedding had evolved between Himself and me. There were complex pick-ups and drop-offs to babysitters to coordinate, not to mention the evening’s activity to decide on.
Himself and I have communicated almost exclusively through email since 2014. It began after I neglected to tell him our neighbour had passed away. Becoming parents means that we rarely have time for focused conversations, and key information can often be overlooked, hence the need to put everything in writing. Marriage is basically an unending game of baton-passing, involving small humans you made back when you actually had time for non-premeditated sex.
For our Valentine’s date, I wanted the cinema, and he wanted Bunsen. An email battle of wills ensued. My argument against going out for dinner concluded with: “But do we really have anything to talk about any more?” and him responding, “No, but we will get hungry”. I complied, knowing we will come home after for ‘Netflix ‘n’ chill’, which is, sadly, not a euphemism, but genuinely does involve watching Netflix. And scarfing this epic dessert. The romance . . .