Strangely, I never
understood the importance of date night until hearing
about The Obamas continuing it even though he was
president. That just struck me. "Jesus, they find it
THAT important? They schedule it in alongside meeting
heads of state?" You know? Like, "oh yeah, can't do
Wednesday, Michelle and I are going to dinner." Crazy,
right?
Turns out, not so
crazy. In fact? I'd say it may be the singlemost
important thing to do as a married couple. Especially
a married couple with children: always find a way,
once a week, to be alone for a couple of hours being
the two of you. It doesn't matter if you spend tons of
time together during the week, etc. There is something
special about getting all dressed up, doin' your hair,
wearing CLEAN clothes - and sharing dinner or whatnot
with your significant other. The exact same way you
would at 16 when you dated in high school. Which, in
fact, was about the last time I ever did that. And
with Talya? Uhm, she just came over in December 2010
and didn't leave. LMAO. We rarely if ever "dated". But
now? We look forward to that day of the week more than
anything else. We are eternally grateful to her mother
who, like clockwork, is here after a long week of
work, ready to play with Vienna so we can go out.
Sometimes, our date night has been sitting on the
swing in the backyard talking - but we don't miss a
week. Sushi and carb-o-lite ice cream tend to be our
favorite things to share... which was the entirety of
our Friday night. :)
Putting the video
together I came upon this still:
Not sure what it
is about that that I adore but I adore
it. Even though I'm doing a self-shot it looks unposed
and captures moments that you never really see of
yourself in the world around you. Like any
photographer (good one anyway) I abhor posed
pictures. I don't want posed pictures,
I want REAL pictures. In 20 years I want to look
back and see what was real, not what was posed. This
is one of those stills and it feels like
history to me. This picture makes me feel like
I'm 65 looking at a moment in time that is far behind
me. Smiling. Remembering how I thought the grey hairs
in my beard made me look "old" when clearly I was
anything but old in that picture. Now, at 65, I'm old
- but what the hell was I worrying about
then?!?!? That's the thing about The Journey.
Everything that gets set in stone in these entries
becomes past immediately. It's on the timeline.
It is set. It's immovable. I love that. To
death.
As we both love
date nights. We've now easily gone on three times the
dates since Vienna has been born than we ever did as a
single couple. Funny how that works, isn't it? We're
so lucky. Living in a fairy tale has a lot more to do
with your own attitude than some fantastically random
series of events... but we do have our own share of
those. I guess what I mean is that simply by
documenting our lives like a picture-book, you
inevitably get those "fairy tale" moments. I'm
romantacizing a freaking date night for crying out
loud - so it has far more to do with HOW you treat the
moments of your life as opposed to them being actually
spectacular... but even with all that? Stripping away
all the colors, the videos, the music, the creativity
put into shaping this fairy tale? We actually
are lucky. There was an incredibly random
stroke of luck that involves us meeting and things did
fall into place effortlessly and continue to do so. We
actually do find happiness in the little things and
our biggest issue is how to properly appreciate JUST
how lucky we are. You know? You actually forget
sometimes. Then you hear other people's stories and
BAM: we're so lucky. We have so much time. Granted, we
have that time because of how we choose to spend the
money we do have but we are also incredibly
fortunate...
...even if that
means some date nights? We split a $5 footlong and a
$5 beer at the Tonga Hut and giggle at the people we
see along the way. We get to be Adam & Talya for a
few moments at the very least, every week for the rest
of our lives.
