Dinner on the Back Step When We Couldn't Get a Sitter

The baby monitor on the step between our plates made a sound like someone slowly unwrapping a cough drop. Ben was down by 7:30, Biscuit was asleep under his crib the way she always is, and I kept glancing at the little green lights anyway, as if they might change their minds. David finally turned the volume down one notch and said, "He's fine, Melissa." He was right. I turned it back up.

That was a week ago Wednesday, and I'm writing about it because it was the first time David and I had eaten a meal alone together since March. In March we went to a taco counter near his office for forty minutes because Emma drove up to watch the kids, and I spent half of it checking my phone. Between March and then there were four months of good intentions and one sitter who canceled with a sore throat.

Why we don't go out, even when we say we will

I'd never added up what a date costs until this summer, and by the time you've paid a sitter who's worth paying (ours is sixteen and gets twelve dollars an hour, which I think is fair) and bought two entrees, you're at sixty or seventy dollars for a night you'll spend half-listening for your phone. That week we'd also just been quoted $412 to find out why the Odyssey makes a noise when it turns left. So the sitter money was spoken for in my head before anyone asked.

I'd stopped suggesting dates, because I didn't want to hear the two of us say no to each other one more time and have to pretend it was about the calendar. It's the kind of thing I mean when I write about the ministry of the messy middle: nothing is wrong exactly, you just stop asking.

We did try the trade once. A couple from our ward with two kids a little younger than Lily agreed back in May to take ours for a Saturday evening if we'd take theirs the next month. It was lovely for exactly one round. Their evening came due on a Saturday Caleb had a game so we rescheduled twice and then it was summer and nobody could find a night. I still think a trade is the best idea going, because no money changes hands and the kids already know the house. But it only works if you put both dates on the calendar before either couple leaves the driveway, and we didn't. If you're starting one, that's the thing I'd do differently. Write down the return night before you hand over the first.

What ninety minutes on the back step looked like

With Ben asleep, Caleb and Lily were in the basement with a movie of Caleb's choosing, a bowl of popcorn big enough to bathe in, and a rule I'd announced at dinner: unless there's blood or smoke, nobody knocks until the credits roll. Lily slid a note under the screen door at 8:50 asking whether popcorn counts as dinner. I wrote back "tonight yes" and she didn't push her luck again.

Back in the afternoon I'd thawed two of the dough balls I keep in the freezer from Friday's pizza batch (they freeze fine, flour them lightly and bag them flat). At eight David grilled them as flatbreads, about four minutes a side, while I sliced the first real zucchini out of the garden thin as paper and tossed it with lemon and olive oil. Torn mozzarella went on at the end, and I'd say the whole thing cost under six dollars. We drank sparkling cider out of jelly jars. David had carried an oak off-cut out of the shop and laid it across two sawhorses for a table, with a dish towel for a tablecloth, and I'll admit that made me a little teary before I'd even sat down.

The sun doesn't go behind the crabapple tree until about nine in July, so we had light the whole time. Penny and Waffle stood at the fence and watched us eat like we were the evening's entertainment. We were out there until 9:15, which is how I know it was ninety minutes and not the hour I'd have guessed.

I thought the rule was no talking about the kids

Before we sat down I'd made a rule in my head, left over from a magazine in the dentist's waiting room back when we had one baby: no kid talk on a date. I planned to enforce it. David opened with, "I don't want to talk about the Odyssey." Then he talked about the Odyssey for twenty minutes.

I let him, and somewhere around the second flatbread I realized I'd been wrong about the rule. We'd been circling the same worries all week without ever saying them to each other in a full paragraph, because full paragraphs don't fit between "where are the shin guards" and "did you give Ben the medicine." The car, Ben dropping his nap and the way Caleb has started shutting his bedroom door, all of it came out while the monitor hissed. I hadn't expected it to be the part that worked. After that it was easy to talk about other things, like the cabin and whether Emma seems happy and a dumb thing David's coworker said about a cat.

I'd been carrying a verse around that week.

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it

(Ephesians 5:28-29)

For most of my life I filed that under David's job. Then I watched him slide the one flatbread without a burnt edge onto my plate and take the heel himself, and I thought about how most nights I cut Ben's food into safe little squares and hand David whatever's left in the pan.

Dates you can have after the kids are in bed

The after-bedtime list I'd actually vouch for is short: a card table with a jigsaw puzzle under the porch light (ours is a 1,000-piece lighthouse with an unreasonable amount of sky, and we've been at it since April) and a walk around the block with one of you carrying the monitor, which reaches about four houses before it crackles. Frozen peaches with cream on the back step if it's too hot for the oven.

One more thing. David floated sending Caleb and Lily around the block with Biscuit while Ben sleeps, so we'd get forty minutes on the step with nobody downstairs. Caleb is eleven and has more sense than I had at fifteen. I'm still the one who can't picture the front door closing behind them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a date at home need to be?

Ours ran ninety minutes and I'd call that plenty. Much shorter and you're still deciding what to talk about when somebody has to go. Much longer and one of you is looking at the clock thinking about the morning.

What if we can't afford a sitter at all?

Skip the sitter. Put the kids to bed and take the back step or the porch, or sit on your bedroom floor with the door shut. A trade with another couple costs nothing, as long as you agree on the return night right away.

Do we have to have a plan?

We didn't, apart from thawing the dough. A plan starts to feel like another thing on the list, and a date that feels like homework won't happen twice. Pick one small thing and let the rest sort itself out.

What do you do about an older child who keeps knocking?

We gave ours a rule and a snack, and it held for about ninety minutes with one note under the door. Ours stopped asking once "until the credits roll" gave them a finish line they could see.

I put a dough ball back in the freezer this morning, so Wednesday isn't a one-time thing. Bear Lake is nine days off and I've already told David the cabin porch counts, thin walls and all.

with love, Melissa