While at our niece’s ninth birthday party this weekend, David and I mentioned that we’d like to see “Star Trek”. My mother-in-law quickly chimed in “Oh, well they can spend the night with me”. Oh really? David and I bolted out of that house faster than if we had written a bad check. We jumped into the car, frantically pulled out our iPhones and in a panic began looking for a theater that had a showing of “Star Trek” that was not sold out. David was pushing 90 miles an hour and screaming the “f-word” at any driver that even thought about going the speed limit. I was dialing and strategizing our movie plan with an efficiency that could have only been matched by a 5-star general plotting an invasion. Our tires squealed against the pavement as we slid into the first parking space we could find at 9:15 pm. We hopped out of the car, and without even looking at each other we began sprinting to the theater door. David ran up to the apathetic teenager working the counter plunked down his credit card and said “I’ll take two tickets for the 10:05 show”. She slowly began to make her selections on the register when I chimed in, “Are there any seats available for the 9:30”? David glared at me as if to say “Damn it woman! Don’t be greedy”. The girl took a moment, stopped chewing her gum and said “uh, yeah there are still, like, 60% of the seats left”. As we slumped into our seats David turned to me and said, “We’ve got 12 hours to see a movie, sleep in, eat breakfast together and squeeze in a meaningful conversation all before our children are returned. ” That’s a man who knows how to seize a moment.
The movie was fantastic. It was so good that I have nothing further to say about it except that J.J. Abrams is a god and that it is the closest thing to cinematic perfection I have seen in a long time. David woke up this morning and made ME breakfast and as we lingered over our hamburger bun toast we commented that when the kids grow up this is what our lives will be like. It was in that moment that we realized how much we missed being with them.