The plan was to be ready by 4pm so we could take a few pictures (think prom without the corsage!) and take our time getting downtown, what with DC traffic and all. A few hours before, I found a slinky pair of shoes with black roses on top—a perfect compliment, I had decided, to my lacy number of a dress (the got-it-on-sale dress that inspired the whole idea of a night out). My date woke up that morning with a sleeping bug—which sometimes happens on Saturdays after a long week—prompting him to snooze at every opportunity that he wasn’t using his legs for anything. This was fine with me, because our babysitter (his mother) was out and about with the kids, allowing me to take care of things (finding those rosy shoes), so everyone was pretty occupied during this very sunny 90-degree day. (One must master the secret art of “occupied”, especially on weekends, in order to attain parental nirvana.)
We put the kids down for late afternoon naps. I made some concoction of chicken, apples, and a box of mac and cheese, thinking about the six course meal that would soon be lavished upon me. After setting up diapering materials and outdoor activities and Sippy cups to be accessible for the babysitter, I began to play with makeup and accessories in my bathroom that needed to be cleaned. I thought about this later as I sat in the restaurant with others who had dressed up like me and wondered if they too were bothered by smells of mildew and the aged toothpaste droppings on the sinks in their bathrooms while they got ready.
So that 4pm departure was drawing near and I realized I should probably wake up my date who wasn’t using his legs in the bed next to my napping son. Groggily, he stepped out to the porch with me where his mother had her camera ready. In front of the Japanese Maple tree I told her, no houses in the background please I don’t really want to see siding in the picture. Click. Click. Okay now I want to get a few with my camera, she said. My date was looking at his cell phone for the time so he accidentally made a few faces just like my prom date did my freshman year because he didn’t really want to go with me but someone else who was allowed to stay out later than midnight. So we got in the car and I decided I would let the drive be what it would be. I figured that a little love music to set the mood never hurt nobody so I put on my Sirius station 003 and there was Peter Cetera and Cher, singing about angels being rescued after all they’d been through. And that was all we needed to take the edge off, that and the extra time we gained from a traffic-less 66 Eastbound. Before we knew it we were turning off of Independence Ave towards the smiling valet staff in front of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the heart of where our date and money would be spent that evening, CityZen.
We read Frank Sinatra’s quote on the cocktail list “alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy” and had a good laugh about that before we ordered their version of sangria, Hefeweizen, and Cabernet. We never once talked about our future (a terrible indulgence of ours) but stayed perfectly in the moment, oohing and aahing over whatever was dancing in our mouths and trying to keep it in there between the laughing and the talking.
As we made our way back westward towards our sleeping children (well at least one of them was) we felt the Zen running through our veins. And best of all, as we woke up to each other and frozen waffles and Kai-Lan, I ’m happy to say the feeling that all is right with the world is still there the morning after…
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