Fire Escape

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

—Psalm 16:6

Aaron and I are deliberate about creating experiences and memories alone together. Our schedules don’t allow for a set date night every week, but we grab date nights whenever we can—driving to the city for dinner, going for a run together, staying in for a movie.

One of my favorite writers told a story about how now that they have kids, sometimes instead of getting a sitter and going out, they have a drink together on their fire escape, a mini-date looking over Manhattan. That idea stuck with me, and some nights when the kids are in bed, instead of watching TV or working on our computers, one of us will say to the other, “Fire escape?”

We open a bottle of wine or brew a pot of tea, and we sit on our front step together, looking out onto our quiet suburban street, talking and listening. It’s not a fire escape looking over Manhattan, but it’s our spot where we sit shoulder to shoulder looking out at the moon rising, the trees, the airplanes to and from O’Hare zigzagging across the sky.