Yesterday was the second time this year that my wife and I took the day off from work and spent it together. As most parents know, when you have a child, the time you get to spend with your spouse is limited. Quite often, the time spent together is briefly in the evening, or randomly throughout the day, and it is never quite as good as a whole day just spent together. OK, so we didn't spend the entire day together, but it was basically the working portion of the day we spent together. In any case, we didn't have anything spectacular planned. In fact, we had no plans at all until a few days before. We discussed possibly going to the beach if it was nice, but it wasn't. So instead, we decided that we would go see a movie and have a nice lunch afterwards. I think the last time we went to see a movie was when Avatar came out. Yes, its been that long, but frankly, we just don't have the time to go see a movie, and the times when we do, we are normally exhausted and I would most likely fall asleep during it. So a morning movie, 10:30 to be exact, was the perfect option for us. We didn't even know what was playing, so we looked up the movies the day before and hadn't heard of most of them. We decided on a new release, "Now You See Me", and it turned out to be a pretty good movie, not the best I have ever seen, but entertaining and captivating which is the a plus for me as I normally fall asleep through boring movies. I think the best part of the movie was that there were maybe 5 or 6 people in the theater including us and as such, it kind of felt like we were getting a private screening. Afterwards, we grabbed lunch at a little Chinese place in Stratford, the Hong Kong kitchen, and found that it had much better food than most other Chinese restaurants in the area. We sat, we talked, the sun came out, and we went home. It was the kind of day that was just begging for me to take a nap, and so I did, for 20 minutes. That is seriously all I need in a nap to keep my juices flowing and give me that little bit of a break to rejuvenate. We hung around the house, did a little cleaning, and then it was back to the real world of being parents. We went and picked up our son from daycare and life returned to normal. So in essence, we had two breaks from reality yesterday, a break from being working parents, and a break from our lives in seeing a movie.
I guess for the first time yesterday, something struck me after seeing the movie. As I mentioned, it wasn't one of those phenomenal movies that I would go back and see over and over again (not that I would go see any movie over and over again), but it was well done and entertaining. In essence, I was able to lose myself in the movie, forget about everything happening off the silver screen in front of me, and transport myself to the fanciful world that the movie created. It was one of those movies that when it ends, you almost want it to continue, to keep on creating a world that you can lose yourself in. It wasn't a sci-fi movie, or a fantasy, it was perfectly realistic, yet about magicians in a sense with a wonderfully twisting plot that kept you wondering what was really going on until the end. If a movie is well done, it sucks us in, turns off the outside world for a while, and gives us the ability to just sit, watch, and not think to much about our own lives. Isn't that what we all need sometimes, a break from our lives? Its not like my life is depressing or anything along those lines, its just that we all need a break sometimes, whether it is in movie form or some other kind of entertainment. Walking out of the movie theater made me realize just how much I needed that time to just forget about everything for a while. Life has a tendency to suck us in and put us on this treadmill of routines that while good, can get monotonous at times. We all have routines, especially if we are parents, and we can all get sucked into them, into forgetting about taking that time off to decompress and forget for a while. I know I do. As a young parent with a life packed full of work, parenting, working on the house, and so on and so forth, there isn't that much time for decompression. I get my walks in the morning, I get my time writing here, I get my evenings in the garage working on a project, but they are all routine, not boring, just what I do. So I guess what I am getting at is that it was nice to get away for a while, watch a movie without thinking about anything else, and then come out at the end essentially having watched a good story acted out on screen. I don't know when my wife and I will go see a movie again, but we will be taking another day off for ourselves in another month or so.
I find that the days we take off together are really good for us. I have heard of some couples who at the start take the time together to just get away, talk, and be together, yet as time goes on and kids come into the picture, that time together fades away and the focus is placed on the child instead. Well, my wife and I are dedicated to ourselves first, and then our family. If we can't keep things copacetic between ourselves, then how are we supposed to keep our family life in order. These days together make it easier the rest of the time because we actually get a whole day to talk about things, discuss any issues that we may have with each other, and most importantly, come to resolutions. Communication is so essential to everything in a relationship that the moment the communication stops, things start falling apart. I have a friend currently who is going through a tough time mainly due to a lack of communication in his relationship. He has separated from his wife, not divorced yet, but separated and hoping things will work out. Yet, there is a lack of communication and dedication to working it out as a couple. He wants to work on it, but she thinks it is all his fault. I don't see the sun rising on this relationship, but unfortunately, setting. I hope I am wrong for my friend's sake, but my gut tells me otherwise. Well, my wife and I are continuing our efforts to communicate more and more and keep things positive between us. I think that as time goes on, we are getting better and better at it. Our relationship, as every one does, has had its little bumps, but its much easier for us to get past them now than it was previously. All that because of communication. The movie we saw was just to get away, the rest of the day was for talking. I personally can't wait for the next day we take off, hoping it won't rain so maybe we can go to the beach, but mostly just looking forward to spending the entire day with my wife.
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