Our Romantic Get-Away

Last week my husband and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. We had a lot to celebrate, as we have been through an unusually trying first decade of marriage. My father-in-law died of cancer just a few months after our wedding. And not only was our daughter born with a million medical issues, but the very year she was born my husband was diagnosed with Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease. At times our myriad stressors have brought us closer; at other times they made our marriage more challenging. I know that every marriage has issues to be dealt with (I know this also from a professional point of view, as I used to be a Marriage and Family Therapist!) and these were our issues. Mostly health-related.

Last night we got to do something we haven't done in 6 1/2 year: spend the night alone. My mother is visiting for Thanksgiving, and she offered to watch the kids overnight. This is something she's never been able to do before, as in the past A had a tracheostomy. No one in my family was trained in how to care for the trach, as they all live out-of-state so there was no reason to give them the extensive training it required to care for my daughter's airway. However, now that both her feeding tube and breathing tube are out, we are free to leave both kids with babysitters and family members. Since we haven't had a night--an ENTIRE night--to ourselves since before our son D was born 6 1/2 years ago, we jumped at the opportunity.

We got a hotel room on Coronado, an island off San Diego. J surprised me with a massage in the hotel's spa, then we went to a decadent dinner at a top-notch restaurant. After, we read letters to each other (each anniversary we write a letter to each other expressing our thoughts and feelings over the previous year). It was so romantic, so intimate. Having a night to ourselves, without waking up really early in the morning with two kids jumping into our bed was delightful. I feel like just one night away rejuvenated our marriage.

I hope to do overnights more often; perhaps once a year. It doesn't have to be as fancy as last night, but just being away alone was amazing. It's nice to reconnect as husband and wife, without the mom and dad roles being thrown in as well.