Whaddya do when you’re 40, divorced, and run into your high-school boyfriend who’s also divorced and your heart goes back to that old pitter-pat?

What WE did was hold tighter this time and do all those things that were forbidden to us as teenagers.
Not that we didn’t do them then, it was just a lot easier and way more fun when no person or rule could stop us.

And so, no longer teenagers with rules, we threw caution to the wind, did whatever we wanted and we had a great time.

We were together every possible moment; we smoked, we drank, we danced, we partied and we both called in sick on many Monday mornings.

We were still responsible…..kinda, but our priority was on each other and just havin’ fun, and…..that was wrong.

When we look back at it today…..well, for a while we didn’t take those responsibilities, called four teen-aged daughters, too serious and we admit we weren’t very good examples, AND…..we’re sorry, we really are.
But if we could do it all over, we’d do it just the same.

In our defense, we were 40 and doin‘ a retake from when we were crazy about each other at 17 and well, we never were good at fighting those hormones…..I’m not even sure we tried.

The fire stayed hot but eventually we knew adult guidance was needed for our four girls.

So, we took a deep breath, became adults again and made a plan.

We wouldn’t get married.
We’d both already tried that rather unsuccessfully.
We set a few ground rules, found a house that would work for all of us, made a schedule and turned into a family.

We had four daughters, three cars and six very busy lives. 


The master bedroom was on the first floor in a separate wing of the house. The rest of the bedrooms were upstairs like a dormitory and we rarely went up there.

Somewhere along the way, the family room became the overflow room.
We never knew for sure who’d be lying on the sofa or the floor each morning when we stood at the kitchen island, drinking coffee. 


Privacy was NOT happening and that was becoming more and more frustrating for the two of us.

From time to time we’d try barricading ourselves in our bedroom for an evening but, well that just didn’t do it.

We really didn’t have alone-time unless we went out and we did, but sometimes we just wanted to stay home…..ALONE!

We needed to claim a night that belonged to us, just us.

We tossed it around and one evening we requested a dining-room round table meeting.

We announced that we were declaring FRIDAY NIGHTS as ours.

We layed out the ground rules.

They knew we’d be available as their parents for true emergencies but, if they called and said EMERGENCY, it better be and according to MY definition!

They were 14, 16, 16, and 18 and each had plenty of girlfriends who often stayed at our house, so Friday nights were good nights for them to recipricate.

There a was a warning/disclaimer to our new rule and that was if they chose to enter the house on a Friday night, we were not responsible for what they might see.
That brought moans, groans and disgusted facial expressions.
We knew they got our point. 


We made a reminder sign that we taped on the outside of the door on Fridays:
DANGER
NO TRESPASSING!
DO NOT ENTER!
BEAT IT!

And by 6 P.M. every Friday night our little house was transformed into a love shack; music, candles, incense and wine.

It’s been many, many years and Friday nights remain sacred, but now they belong to our daughters.
And that thrills us.
Because if they’re enjoying their Friday nights as much as we did, then we have some very happy daughters.

And in the end, maybe we didn’t do such a bad job after all.