A good “First Date”
It’s Saturday night and my husband and I are sitting at our kitchen table — candles lit, oysters shucked, bubbles dancing in our flutes, ice knocking away in the tupperware container as we lift our bottle of Veuve Cliquot to refill our glasses. It is just another Saturday night, but I make the decision to uncork the bottle…and eat oysters.
Why not? We need a night outside of this pandemic. We need a night with each other.
We sit and eat and talk. About all kinds of things. Without recalling who did the most laundry, or who was “on” most with the kids, or who cleaned the bathrooms last; without any of the residual tension from the week.
We enjoy each other.
I feel happy, at home, and that I have something to offer as a listener, and also as individual outside of my role as a mother or teacher.
After a few glasses, I open up about the re-emergence of my anxiety:
“The truth is…I have always felt like ‘a good first date’…but beyond that, I feel like I lose momentum. I disappoint people. That I am insufficient.”
My husband laughs, “Insufficient? I don’t think those are the words you are looking for…”
While his laughter is comforting, I often feel like I can’t keep up with being a mother, teacher, friend, partner. First impressions are no problem; I am in performance mode (an eruption of energy and enthusiasm), but then I feel like it takes my whole being to keep it up. There are too many roles to play. Too many people to please. I am exhausted. I often just want to be alone. To think. To create. To be in my head.
And without that time on my own, I lose myself to the context and feel ungrounded and unable to hold my own in different situations (both social and professional).
He picks up my glass and empties the last of the champagne into it.
“You have to let go of expectations and just be confident in who you are.”
I slide another oyster into my mouth and am reminded of my grandmother, Joan Parsons Woods, a Newfoundlander and storyteller, an artist and potter, the life of the party, and a woman with a truly indomitable spirit who passed away 10 years ago. I think about the legacy she left behind in the pottery we use daily (the wine glass that I hold, the butter dish on our counter, the salad bowls in our cupboard), and through the sculptures that document 100 years of our family history, created at the age of 74 after she had been living with Parkinson’s for 7 years.
For my grandma, each day was a new day. Perhaps first dates are just the beginning of a lifetime of memories. I keep this thought in my mind as I look across the table and connect (once again) to the man sitting on the other side. And I think about how, just maybe, good first dates can last forever.
