In a crowded room, two people can be all alone

This column was published in The Wilson Daily Times on Nov. 29, 2013.

The two of us sat alone in the crowded bar, the late afternoon, post-game crowd undulated shoulder to shoulder all around us, but we were as alone as if we were on an island.

Credit cards and greenbacks passed back and forth on either side of us. The crew of bartenders busily filled glasses and picked up tips scattered on the bar. Another football game was on the television to the left, and my eye occasionally veered toward it to check the score.

All around the room the size of a back yard, people were talking, laughing and greeting with a joyfulness typical of a weekend scene in a college town. Most of the patrons were our children’s age or younger, though a few were our contemporaries, and a handful were older. We hardly noticed.

A tall glass of the microbrew du jour before each of us, we talked in soft tones, nuzzling close so that we heard each other’s quiet tones despite the cacophony all around us, rubbing elbows and shoulders and hips.

Twenty-five years before, in this same city, the city where we met, we had sat in a booth for an anniversary dinner, fingers happily intertwined, and watched two other couples, older, wealthier, more content with their lives.

They were out for a social evening, laughing and enjoying a midweek dinner with friends. For those other couples, dinners like this might have been routine, a standing date, unlike ours, a once-a-year occasion, our small children left with relatives for a few hours so that we could “date” and pretend.

We only pretended that we were carefree; they really were. But those other couples that night were not happier than we.

Now, 25 years and three grown children later, we are standing at the bar, spending money at leisure, and enjoying the company of each other, oblivious to all around us. This is the carefree life we never had when we were as young as the masses surrounding us.

They are flirting with new acquaintances or joking with old friends. They are enjoying the ambiance of the crowd and the noise, but we, in the midst of it, have found a quiet solitude for just the two of us.

We, the ones who know no one else in the whole restaurant, just talk as we wait for a table, no hurry at all. Our talk, as it so often does, turns to the children we’ve reared.

No longer under foot, they call us now on cell phones and ask what we’re doing, expressing surprise that we’re out on the town. That’s not like us, not like the frugal parents who scrimped for grocery money and patented cheap vacations when they were growing up. They know our outdated clothes and our flea-market furniture, not this.

The children are grown, no longer dependents, but still our first concerns. As we talk about the children and their needs, she turns to me, reflectively, and says, “I think the best thing we ever gave our children was the example of our marriage.”

I nod in agreement, brushing her hair with my forehead we’re so close. “It’s like the old saying, 'The best thing any man can do for his children is to love their mother,'” I tell her.

After so many years of anxiety over money, illness, adolescence and all the rest that goes into parenting, we’ve discovered we can relax and be content.

This is our small reward — a quiet dinner just for two in a crowded, boisterous restaurant in a place where time disappears.

Hal Tarleton column, WDT 11/29/2003

-->