Mastercard’s Got Nothin’ On Us

We sit nose-to-nose in the tiny stone room that some say is the highest point in the city. We share a completely fantastic pizza made from ingredients that should never be put on pizza, like salad. (Daring, no?) We drink imported beer out of thick glass goblets–wine glasses on testosterone, basically–and laugh. We talk about the past and the future and mostly all the bits in between, and when dessert comes, we shut up. (Chocolate soufflé. You understand.) We wind our way through the cobblestone maze of Centro in the rain, holding hands and flirting shamelessly, and when we find ourselves back home, we smile.

This is date night, post-children edition. It is exactly like fine wine–rare and luxuriant, complex and lingering, inhibition-loosening and too expensive to indulge often. Yet as most indulgences are, date night is worth every penny… and then some. (Babysitter: €25.50. Dinner: €40. Half a liter of gasoline: €580.18. A whole evening to feel sexy and pretend to discuss things in an intelligent manner and remember why we like us: Priceless.)

Dating before kids was fun too, though usually less… sophisticated. We used to go to the wondrously horrifying dollar theater about once a week to watch movies we only cared $1 about and contract interesting diseases through the ripped plush upholstery. Afterward, we’d make out in the parking lot and grin when passers-by yelled at us to get a room, because hey, we’re married, even though we don’t look married because married people don’t make out in parking lots, and we already have a room, and ha!

Now that we’re parents two times around and legally Responsible Adults (to elaborate on a previous point, ha!), we tend to do more date-ish things on our evenings out. Dress up, eat at restaurants with real tablecloths, that sort of thing. But we still make out in the parking lot afterward, and I’m reminded every time why I wouldn’t trade our relationship–with its sparks and sand pits, its whimsicality and profundity, its ins and outs and especially the whirling in-betweens–for anything in the world.