After being married a few years we realized something. We needed a regular date night. Married couples have a lot of things competing for their time with each other—work, church, illness, children (their own or, in our case, those of relatives). It’s all too easy to get so preoccupied with these other things that you forget to spend some time just with each other. Date night is one way of fighting that.

It was M.K.’s idea, really. We settled on Thursdays as our date night. We go out to eat each Thursday after I get off work. We’ve developed a little circuit out of our limited array of locally-available possibilities.

Most often we go to the Oriental place and their buffet. We walk in and place our order. We’ve been there often enough by now that the girl at the counter usually knows we’ll be eating in, that M.K. will have a diet Coke and I’ll just get water. We try to sit in the same place, a little semi-separate room in back with only a few tables that we can usually catch when it’s empty and quiet.

Sometimes we eat Mexican instead. There’s quite a good place nearby. It’s always crowded and noisy, so we sit wherever they put us. The place is run by actual Mexicans (Mom orders in Spanish whenever we take her there) and has a bright décor with gaily painted carved parrots and trapezoidal windows in the interior partition wall.

Lately we’ve started going to a local hamburger joint. The paper-thin veneered paneling gives it a kind of 1970s rec room look. There’s a motley assortment of tables and booths, a little salad bar with laminated wooden bowls, and an old soft drink cooler that now holds salad bar crackers instead of drinks. The food is cheap, a bit greasy, and more or less sold by the pound. It’s the sort of slightly rundown-looking place we both remember going to (in different towns) growing up. That’s part of why we like going there. It feels like home.

There are other options too—a fish place in a neighboring town, a local steakhouse (when we’re really feeling celebratory), a couple of okay fast-food places, and the ubiquitous Subway. We can have a good time at any of them. It’s not about eating fancy. We just need to get away from our everyday surroundings and concerns and spend some time with just the two of us.

We never know what we’ll find ourselves talking about when we go. Work, of course, and family, since an evening can’t go by without something said about these vital concerns. And then we move on to other things. We might see one of M.K.’s students or teacher colleagues and say hello to them, or more rarely one of my library patrons. We usually find something to reminisce about. We both had very vivid childhoods, in our differing ways, and we love to fill each other in on them.

M.K. sometimes finds these evenings out a useful opportunity to breach some proposal or plan, such as the idea of driving a school bus before and after classes. I wasn’t thrilled to hear about that idea. We could use the money, and the district could use another qualified driver. But M.K.’s health is not good. The thought of another tiring commitment worries me. I gave a conditional assent for trying it in the coming year, health permitting. Then I changed the subject, or rather morphed it, by recalling Dad’s stint as a bus driver for a time when I was a kid. We had a lot of fun telling each other school bus stories.

After the meal is over, we…well, we usually just go home. There’s not a lot of night life in our town. We don’t even live close to a movie theater. Our budget would not accommodate a lot of entertainment anyway. Movies and such are reserved for special occasions, like anniversaries and birthdays. The rarity of those occasions makes us look forward to them with particular anticipation.

For regular date night, though, we have our meal and our conversation and our relaxation, and then we go home. From there it tends to go like a usual evening at home, with reading and maybe some TV. I touch M.K. often, with little gentle touches that are my way of saying “I love you.” M.K. looks at me now and then and makes a less subtle compliment about this or that to do with me. A whole evening at home together is itself not something we can take for granted, what with assorted other responsibilities. We plan hard to keep those Thursdays clear!

And then comes bedtime. This is often my favorite time of day. I’m practically always tired enough to welcome the chance to turn in. And it gives us one last and very special form of together time. We climb beneath the covers together. I warm my cold-natured self against M.K.’s furnace-like body. We touch, and we kiss, and say how much we love each other. Perhaps we make love. I don’t think either of us believes there’s any such thing as too much in that respect, though exhaustion and illness often hold us in check. Even if we are too tired for this, we spend time in each other’s arms, and wish each other good night and pleasant dreams. And we pass the night. Together.

I usually wake up during the night, as I have since I was a child. I lie there for a while and hear the deep and steady breathing and feel the heavy presence beside me. I look over. Perhaps I touch. And I think about how thankful I am. Then I try to get back to sleep, to be ready for the next day’s responsibilities.