The Most Important Person in a Marriage - The Babysitter!

My honey and I went out on a date tonight - nothing fancy, but more than the usual run to the cinema to see the latest blockbuster (his choice) or romcom (my choice), where popcorn is our dinner as we try to squeeze a week's worth of relationship into a miniscule but expensive three hour block.

This night we chose to forego the celluloid and focus on each other. We allotted three and a half hours, and went to a nice pizza place for dinner. The conversation was riveting, quiet, and while acknowledging how awesome our kids are, focused on each other, not the offspring. I learned something new about my husband of many years - he's fascinated by engineering. Who knew?!

This new knowledge was made possible by our babysitter - a university student who's parents are friends of ours. She's a responsible, strong, intelligent, flexible and forgiving young woman who doesn't seem to understand the force she weilds within our relationship. If she's unavailable we don't go out, don't get time alone, don't get an opportunity to connect, talk without interruption, gaze lovingly into our own navels confident that the other is as intently interested in all the navel's caverns and whorls as you are yourself.

We are lucky because occasionally we get an additional night off when my in-laws come over, but babysitter time is different. It's guilt free. We can go and squander our time and our money and not worry about the reaction we'll get when we finally come home. Approaching the house when my in-laws are there, I still get the same tightening of the gut, the same shortness of breath, anticipating the looks and/or comments that truthfully I haven't heard since we were married. But I remember and so does my body.

Our babysitter is expensive. We want to make sure that if it came down to a choice between a job and us, that she's seriously consider us as her priority. And we trust her, which is invaluable. We wouldn't leave our kids with just anyone. Our neighbour down the street leaves their children with a twelve year old. I couldn't do that.

But our babysitter is in the driver's seat, and we're well aware of it, even if she's not. When she's happy, we're happy, and the kids are happy. And for a couple of hours, my love and I get to experience life as it will be later when the cacophany, diapers and insomnia are past, and we've moved on to new challenges as parents and as partners.