"I wrote about you again today," I whisper into the phone.

There is a shocked silence on the other end. Am I a stalker? Hardly. The person I am talking to is Hubby. He has been the subject of many a blog entry lately and I take great delight in telling him that I wrote about him on a particular day. He is all scared that I may be detailing all of his secrets to the entire world. I like to keep him guessing.

So once a year, when spring is in the air and the flowers are in bloom, Hubby's thoughts turn to love (usually around Valentine's Day). Some long-buried male instinct surfaces and he takes it upon himself to plan a romantic event, usually with spectacular results. Last year we went to see the Vagina Monologues. This year we went to the Marine Room. It is a restaurant cozily situated on the beach. A large plate-glass window dominates one wall of the restaurant, affording a prime view of the ocean. The sky is a dark grey illuminated by a few streaks of trailing crimson as the sun sets. During high tide, the water rises all the way to the top of the window and the restaurant is gradually transformed into an aquarium. Sometimes the fish swim right up to the window. It is very posh and romantic and nice change from eating at "kid-friendly places."

When we are seated, the waiter asks us in this cultured voice, "Would you like the Evian ($20 a bottle) or the house water?" He emphasizes "house water" in a tone that implies that if you did lower yourself to order THAT item, you are a peasant.

"Uh, we'll have the house water, please," I, the peasant, tell him.

"Very good madam," he replies without missing a beat.

The dinner was fabu. I immediately notice that it is a quiet and slow-paced dinner. There is no cutting up of food into tiny bits, coaxing of "please just eat one vegetable for Mommy", and no excited children jumping around. The mental shift from being parents to being a couple on a date takes a while to accomplish. Afterwards we pick up the kids and drive home, and we go back to being parents again.

That evening made me think of how our roles can own so much of us. Currently I am playing the mommy role. When I take my daughter to ballet, they address me as "X’s Mommy". When the kids are sleeping, sometimes Hubby and I are so tired we still refer to each other as "Mommy" and "Daddy" in conversation (I'm not going to even think about the whole Freudian aspect of this). Going back to being part of a couple or even just myself, Mir, takes effort. Once in awhile it's nice to remember that I'm not defined only by the roles I take on and this dinner was one such occasion.