Dream Date

It had only been a few weeks since I sent Kara off to college. The job of being a parent comes with the horrible knowledge that, one day, your child will have to leave the nest. You spend years mentally and emotionally preparing yourself for it, always imagining that it’s down the road and you’ll deal with it later. You hear about it from friends, media, and even your own parents, and they all say the same thing: you are going to be so proud but feel so horrible at the same time. But you think that you’re special or different; you think that it won’t be as bad as all that. And you’re always wrong.

I mean, sure, initially, there was the bittersweet mixture of pride and sadness as I hugged her tightly not wanting to let my baby cross the threshold into adulthood. But after she faded beyond the horizon towards her future, a whole new wave of emotions washed over me.

I’ll admit that not having a teenager in the house anymore was a blessing: no more useless junk or dirty clothing laying around, no more moody fights about pointless power plays, and no more tying up the bandwidth. Plus, having to pretend I didn’t know she was sneaking around with her boyfriend was exhausting. But it didn’t take long for the loneliness to settle in.

I never noticed how quiet things were around here now that her music wasn’t blaring day and night. I never appreciated how much I enjoyed just watching television with her after a long day at work. Even cooking dinner has become a bit of a chore because it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort to make a full meal just for myself. The daily humdrum of my chores seemed dismal now that she wasn’t here for me to talk to. The house just feels too big.

Too empty.

The only solace was my neighbor (and ironically best friend), Denise. She was always going on cruises or European vacations and bragging about her many romantic adventures. It must be nice to be the unattached widow of a successful entrepreneur. Truthfully, I could never tell if she was genuinely happy or if she just buried it beneath a mask of expensively bought euphoria. If it was the latter, she hid it well.

So, when she suggested that I should get out there and meet someone new, I didn’t really know what to think of it. I had only dated one man in my life: Kara’s father, Ted, and I didn’t remember that going well, aside from the fact that Kara was the result. I haven’t seen him since he bailed, and I had steered clear of relationships ever since. Kara had been my life and she didn’t need that kind of drama.

I didn’t need it.

Plus, there was just the underlying fear that I carry with me at all times: would anyone even want to be with me? Since my career with The Dating Game was limited to one trial nineteen years ago, I had to wonder if it had changed too much since then. With all that baggage, I was skeptical about being in a relationship to begin with.

It didn’t help that I had always had high standards for the quality of dates. My grandparents were the cutest old people that you had ever seen in your life and every single moment you saw them, you could feel their love radiate outwards from them and touch your heart. Though my siblings hated it, I always loved to hear the story of how their first date went, partially because of how well they had rehearsed it, but mostly because of how beautiful it was. I often told it to myself to reassure me:

Grandpa, in his youth, was a meek character: more drawn to studying science than throwing a football, and Grandma was a respectable young woman. Still, Grandma seemed to like him. She always liked to say that when he finally got the courage to ask her out, he was flustered and could barely get the words out. That’s how she knew it was real: butterflies in your stomach, making you nervous, stumbling over your words. Smooth talkers just looking for a quick fling were always obviously bad news. I guess Grandma was a bit of a romantic because she agreed to the date.

He picked her up and handed her flowers at the door. He drove her to “the good ol’ diner,” as he described it, where they both ordered the chicken, it being the cheapest thing on the menu, and shared a milkshake. Strawberry. Afterwards, they drove to the local drive-in movie theater. I never did find out what movie they had actually watched, as they kept changing it every time we asked. Either they forgot, or they did it on purpose to preserve the mystery and mess with us. My money was always on the latter.

The story continued with Grandma saying that Grandpa got her home a little early. The two of them laid out on the hood of his car, staring at the stars and talking about their future plans. As the night wore on, Grandpa’s hand kept getting a little closer to hers until finally…

As an adult, I look back on that story and wonder how much of it was censored for our benefit, but back then I didn’t care. I used to dream about lying on the hood of a car and talking with a boy about where our lives would lead us. It was a simple date, but the best things in life can be simple, can’t they?

If I was going to try to get back out there, I wanted to look for that. But things have changed since then. Even my parent’s story of their first date was radically different. Of course, that took place in the 80s, before I even understood what that meant.

Whereas my grandparents were school friends who became enamoured with each other, my mom and dad randomly met at some rock concert. A concert that they weren’t supposed to be at to begin with, as my grandparents liked to contribute. My dad liked to brag that he beat up a guy who was grinding on my mother, but you could tell from her wide smile and rolling her eyes that it was just a fabrication.

My dad liked to tell us that mom only liked him because he was a “bad boy.” Forgive me, Tim “I’m late for the PTA meeting, Barbara, do you have the Snickerdoodles?” Johnson if I don’t quite believe that. But apparently, that wasn’t too far off from the truth. Their first date, Dad had picked her up on his motorcycle, dressed in his leather jacket, and taken her to an animal testing facility to free the animals there. They were caught and had to run to escape jail time. But I guess the adrenaline was enough to keep them together, as they’re still going strong today.

However, I don’t think that’s what I’d want out of a date. I’m not much of a “doing exciting and/or illegal things” kind of person anymore, not that I ever really was, but that seemed too excessive for me. Especially now. My idea of a good evening is curling up by the television and watching reruns of old sitcoms, maybe a glass or two of Merlot.

But I have to confess, I don’t think I’m the best judge of quality dates to start with. Especially since what happened with Ted. Our first date wasn’t anything special… we were kind of too broke to really afford anything different. Ted was a couple years older than me and had his own apartment. There was kind of this mentality to our relationship that we were “hanging out” and not really “dating.”

He made me a mixtape, which I had heard was romantic, but all the songs on it were weird pop songs that weren’t romantic at all, at least not in the traditional sense. It was a fun-house mirror version of what I expected my first relationship to be. I often hoped that he’d be romantic and sweep me off my feet. In all honesty, I think I just dated him because I wanted so badly to have what my grandparents had: true love on the first go around.

Turns out that love really hurts. My hopes for a perfect date were shattered after I got pregnant. He told me that he wanted to do right by me and the baby: we’d get married and he’d be a great dad, but he was nothing but a fantastic liar. I haven’t seen him since, but he does still try to reach out to me on Facebook, usually for money. I had resolved then and there to ensure that I would never get hurt like that again.

But, nine months later, Kara was born and she became my whole world. This precious child was something I knew that I must protect from the evils of the world. I wanted nothing for her but happiness and joy. So, I did the best I could and stayed away from dating. I couldn’t put her through the loss of a potential father in case it failed.

But I never tried to stop Kara from dating. It happened all too soon. I remembered joking around with her when she had a crush on a boy in school, but I was almost as ill-prepared for the revelation that she had a date as I was for her departure to college. And, so help me, she and her boyfriend are so cute. Whenever they’re not talking to each other and gabbing about how lame their teachers are, they’re always texting each other and she’s grins ear to ear every time.

After her first date, she said that she knew he was the one. What was the date? He took her to the library and they just sat in a nook reading to each other. Such joy found in simplicity. Now they’re both off at different colleges, but she assures me that their relationship is going strong: long distance isn’t the struggle that it used to be, thanks to modern technology.

When you’re a parent, you always hope that your kids will learn from, not only their mistakes, but yours as well. You want them to be better than you, even if your ego can’t take that fact. Well, the other night, Kara proved that she has, indeed, surpassed me in terms of wisdom.

I asked her how her long-distance relationship was going.

“Great. I miss him, of course, but the distance is actually a good thing. We get to figure out who we are, without being defined by each other, but we still get to be together.”

Wise words.

Though initially skeptical of her statement, the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became by it. She was still going to be a couple, but she was pursuing being a person, devoid of any identity reliant on any other person. I thought back on my life and realized that I had always done the opposite. I had always defined myself by others: my expectations for dating were built on my grandparents and my parent’s stories, my first relationship was defined by my expectations and foiled by reality. Even after then, my life had always been about my daughter. Even Denise somehow had an influence on who I was. I’d never taken the time to be myself.

So, here I sit, at this fancy restaurant table, drinking my glass of merlot and eating my chicken parmesan, with a movie ticket on my phone, ready to go on my dream date… by myself.