Date Night, 2020 Style

Six firefighters and two police officers. 

That’s what it took to get Tess out of our first floor bathroom. 

It’s been a long pandemic in our house. 

Social isolation. Distance learning. Online grocery orders. Working from home. Grub Hub and Door Dash. Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, masks, cabin fever, pandemic baking, weight gain, low-grade depression, anxiety, you know the drill.

And of course, we cheated here and there. I’ll admit it, I’m not self-righteous or political. We had play dates. We went to the playground, to the zoo, flew on a plane, I hugged my brother and my friend Annie whom I hadn’t seen in three years, sue me. 

But still, after seven months, Tighe and I needed a break. We needed a date night. Years ago, when Nate and Sam were babies, date nights were a weekly event. As our kids grew older, more numerous, and busier, they became fewer and fewer. 

And after way too much time at home with them and too many dinners at our dining room table trying to shout over their attention-seeking shrieks, we were desperate for some time alone. 

So I booked a babysitter and Tighe booked a hotel room about a mile from our house. 

Get your mind out of the gutter, Dave. We sat in the hotel room and talked. We talked about the upkeep of our lawn, the broken fence posts in the backyard, Tess’s antics at swim lessons that day, the list price of our neighbor’s house, the latest coronavirus gossip. It was so boring, just typing these sentences makes my eyes glaze over.

At 7pm, we went down to the hotel’s restaurant where we had a reservation. And just as we were being seated in the near-empty restaurant, my phone buzzed. Like, ringing. Which nowadays only means one of two things: a telemarketer or an emergency.

It was Tighe’s aunt, the mother of our high school babysitter. 

Figuring she had come over to help her daughter console an inconsolable Lou—that baby loves his mom—I ignored it and smiled at the masked waiter as he showed us the drink menu.

But then Tighe’s phone rang. 

Same caller. 

Uh-oh.

As the waiter ran away, like he was busy or something, Tighe answered his phone. I could just hear bits and pieces of her end of the conversation.

“Tess is locked in the bathroom. She’s okay! She’s happy! We slid her an iPad and some fruit snacks. We’re FaceTiming her, but her little fingers just can’t turn the lock.”

“Ugh! Sam did the same thing when he was about the same age!” I was talking to no one in particular, simply replying to the bits of the dialogue I could hear.

“Nope, the hinges are on the inside,” I shook my head. A few moments later, “A screwdriver won’t work, I tried that with Sam!”

When Sam was about 4, he had locked himself into the same bathroom, his fingers unable to turn the lock enough to fully unlatch it. I had slid him my phone and asked him to take pictures of what the inside of the door looked like so I knew what I was working with. The locks and doorknobs on these old houses are a bit finicky. I removed the outside knob, but it was detached from the lock itself. I was on the verge of frustrated tears, just as I was about to start hacking through the hollow door with a screwdriver, Sam very absentmindedly flipped the lock and walked out, without a care in the world. 

But back to Tess. Tighe wasn’t going to let a little matter like our only daughter trapped in the bathroom interrupt our first date in over 200 days.

“She’ll figure it out, just have her keep trying,” he assured his aunt. “It’ll be a good lesson for her.”

His aunt promised to text us when she was free and Tighe hung up. 

Our drinks came, followed by an appetizer, and still no liberation text.

I was getting antsy, imagining her growing scared and worried inside that tiny bathroom.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Tighe  said, trying to make me feel better. “They said she’s happy. She’s probably loving it! Snacks, attention, time away from her brothers, it’s her dream come true!”

As our entrees arrived, my phone rang again.

“Erin, I called 911.”

“You did? Okay.” I was processing. Should we go home? I was hoping for dessert. Or at least another drink.

“They’re sending a police officer.”

“Okay…” Still processing as I glanced down at my artichoke-stuffed chicken. I love artichokes. 

“Don’t worry, though! She’ll be fine. She’s really happy and everything else is fine!”

We dug into our dinners and waited for the Nest front door notifications on our phones. We didn’t want to miss the moment that the cop showed up. 

Except it wasn’t a single cop. 

It was two cop cars and a hook and ladder truck with the sirens on. 

We watched them storm the house and a few minutes later, Mara sent us a picture of the busted door.

“Tess was super calm,” her text read, “but when that door flew open, her eyes were huge and I just grabbed her because there was an arsenal of cops and firemen filling your kitchen! Have fun tonight! Lock is fixed now!”

Tess’s account of the events backed up what was reported to us except that she had more to say about the movie they watched than about being locked in the bathroom and a “bulky” cop risking his life to bust through our bathroom door. 

When Tighe asked her what happened, she replied in one run-on sentence.

“We were playing the tickle-monster game and I hid in the bathroom and the door accidentally locked and then Francie gave me the iPad and some snacks and then Nate and Sam called the fire engine and the cop accidentally broke the door and then Mara took a picture of us.”

“Were you scared?”

“No,” she said pausing a moment to reflect. “I was a little bit brave.”

“Was it fun?”

“The bathroom wasn’t fun. But Francie is fun!”

After finishing dessert and watching a movie in the hotel, we came home to find the door cracked in half, the doorknob and the lock sitting in pieces on the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker, and a small pile of paint chips on the floor just inside the door. And most importantly, four kids fast asleep in their beds.

“Best date night ever,” Tighe mumbled as he fell asleep that night.