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Originally published on Medium on January 29th, 2023
As my wife headed out the door on Wednesday, I noticed that she looked sad. She lacked the usual spring in her step. There was no sign of the typical twinkle in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m just tired, Wednesday always makes me tired,” she said.
I kissed her goodbye and set about getting the kids ready for their day. But, as I was driving my eldest to school, I said, “Mom didn’t seem happy.”
“You’re right, she didn’t,” my daughter agreed.
We settled into silence, and I kept thinking about how to cheer my wife up. Then I looked over at my daughter and realized, once again, that she was getting too close to “all grown up” for my liking. But this time the much-lamented observation led me to think, “You know, she’s old enough that she can stay home alone for a while. Maybe I should take my wife out for dinner tonight.”
So, I turned to my daughter and said, “How would you and your sister feel about having Burger King after school?”
“Yay!” she said, followed by, “but why?”
“I was thinking I might be able to cheer up your mom if I took her out for dinner. Do you think you can handle being home alone for a few hours?”
“I think that’s a good idea,” she said.
So, plan forming, I dropped her off, went home, and invited my wife to a date via text message. I prefer to send her text messages when she’s at work so she doesn’t think there’s some kind of emergency.
Soon after, I received a response. My wife is from Peru, and she wrote “Siiiiiiiiii!” The message made me smile. You can always tell she’s excited when she repeats the letter “I.”
So, everyone had voiced approval of the plan but my youngest daughter and the dog. I wasn’t too worried about the dog and I was confident the Burger King proposal would delight my youngest.
The thing about a date night is that the anticipation is just as important as the event itself. That’s why we shouldn’t spring things on people. I could tell that inviting my wife out had energized her. She kept sending me messages.
“I’m so excited about going out! What should I wear?”
I was glad that her enthusiasm would help sustain her through her work day. It was a Wednesday. Nobody likes Wednesdays.
I picked up my daughter from school and pitched her the Burger King plan. She was in. With a coupon, I could get them a meal for $10. The best part was that they’d actually prefer fast-food burgers to a gourmet dinner.
Later on, I picked up my eldest, got the Whoppers, and waited for my wife.
When my wife came home from work, she was a transformed woman. Both the sparkle in her eye and the spring in her step had returned. She was flirtatious and happy.
We gave our final instructions to the girls. The dog yawned at us. Then we were out the door.
There’s a sushi restaurant up the road from our place, but our kids like to go there and I didn’t want to have to admit that we went there without them.
“Where should we go?” my wife asked.
“How about that bar restaurant up the road, the one that’s supposed to be haunted?” I suggested. We’d tried to go there a bunch of different times, but it always seemed to be closed when we had a free moment. Maybe fate would be on our side today.
“Oh! Okay!” my wife said.
On the one hand, proposing the haunted bar was a bit of a risk. A date night is a rare and precious thing, and it’s nice to know what you’re getting into. But I had it in my head that fate was with us on that night, so we headed to the haunted bar.
The haunted bar is one of those places where you open the door and have to pass through a 4-foot foundation of rough stone before you get to the seating area.
The place had pleasant mood lighting. There were tree boughs with white Christmas bulbs decorating the corners, and the ceiling was covered in patterned tin. The only other person eating was a man sitting at the table by the window accompanied by his infant daughter.
My wife started off by telling me about her day. That’s the decompression period that takes place whenever she gets home from work. She thanked me for cheering her up with the invite.
The waitress came with the menu. I selected an $18 dollar hamburger.
“I would like a steak,” my wife said.
“There’s a filet mignon,” I said.
“Is it super expensive?” she asked.
It was $38 and that did strike me as expensive. But dang it, you can’t think about money all the time. My wife does a lot for the family. She wanted a steak.
“Don’t worry about what it costs,” I said.
We ordered our meals and our drinks and a few minutes later we were sipping our beers. The baby at the other table started cooing at us. My wife smiled back.
My wife has now been in Wisconsin for “13 winters.” She keeps track of her time here in winters rather than years. Back when we were dating, we used to go to a resort called “El Colono Inn.” Our favorite menu item there was also the filet mignon. In fact, El Colono is where we ended up getting married.
So, you can imagine my wife’s nostalgia when the waitress brought us the haunted bar’s filet mignon, and darn it if the dish didn’t look exactly like what El Colono used to serve.
My wife looked at the dish and looked at me in surprise. She picked up her knife and prepared a mouthful that included steak, potatoes, and asparagus. That was just the way she used to do it back during our weekends at El Colono.
She tried it, and that twinkle in her eye surged. “Oh my gosh, it’s the same! Here, you have to try!”
She prepared another mouthful and served it to me. I was stunned. “Yes, that’s just like El Colono!”
We finished our beers and ordered another round. I got to work on my hamburger. Normally, I don’t believe in an $18 hamburger, but I don’t mind paying it if it’s worth it. This burger was worth it.
We started talking about the years, how big the girls were getting, and how far we’d come since we were married. My wife wiped a few tears away. “Imagine getting sentimental over a steak,” she said.
“Those are good tears,” I replied. “Those are the kind of tears that rejuvenate you.”
I sent my kids a text message.
“Are you kids doing okay?”
“Yup,” my daughter replied. As in, “Yahhhhhh!”
We finished up, we paid, and as we headed toward the door our server called out, “Hasta luego!” My wife and I always talk in Spanish when we’re alone. It was nice to know the server appreciated that. Too often in recent years, speaking Spanish has been a source of contention.
In the car, my wife said, “I expected a date night, I didn’t expect to be transported back to El Colono.”
“We’ll have to do this again.”
“De acuerdo.”
It’s odd the moments fortune picks to show you some favoritism. The pandemic has been especially hard on my wife. We haven’t been able to visit Peru for the last few years. The stresses we all had to endure were amplified by the additional fears she felt for her family. I know she felt guilty that they were so far away and she couldn’t go to them.
Sometimes you go through life and get so focused on putting your head down and working that you forget to notice the good things that are all around you. We feel like we have to be frugal, go to bed, get up, and work.
Every now and then you have to take a moment, wrap it up, put a bow on top, and present that moment to your wife.
We got home, the kids were fine, and the dog wagged his tail. We went to bed and slept soundly. It was just a regular Wednesday, but by the time she went back to work, it felt like we’d finished a three-day weekend.
“Thanks for the date night! It’s making today easier too,” my wife wrote.
“No, thank you,” I replied. “Thank you for the kids and the memories and all that you do.”
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