Dusk tapered into darkness, trees dappling the horizon behind the storied stage of The Muny in St. Louis. I sat with a girlfriend, letting the magic of live theater add to the beauty of the night, our kids tucked snuggly into bed by our husbands in my friend’s new home.

We seat danced, just a little, to songs so deeply ingrained in the fabric of our memories that we were able to look at each other and grin when they censored a few words during “Greased Lightning.”

We returned late. She slid into her bedroom while I washed off makeup and brushed teeth in a sink that had become familiar during our visit. When I opened the door to the guest room, Ryan was awake. His laptop sat open on his lap, and we chatted until my eyelids grew heavy — the conversation flitting from the view of the city from the Arch to the never-ending list of house projects that looms over so many of our decisions.

For years, we were able to talk all the time. Over dinner, at coffee shops while coffee grew cold on the table between us, with our feet propped on the couch during a lazy Saturday, on car rides with the music playing whatever we wanted to hear — regardless of the child-friendliness of the music.

Now, two children later, our conversations are different.

We text during the day, phone calls difficult to fit between his meetings and our children’s ability to increase their volume ten-fold whenever they see the phone at my ear. A conversation started during dinner is stopped and re-started seventeen times before we leave the table. With chatty kids excited to share their day with Daddy, what we want to discuss fades into the background.

Like the T-Birds in Grease, we “Keep talking, whoa, keep talking.”

You’d think our words would tumble on top of each other when we finally find ourselves alone. Yet, stalled dinner conversations stay on pause for a while after the kids go to bed. We sit side-by-side many nights, working on laptops and trying to fight against the numbers on the clock that seem to move too quickly against a deadline.

Words fly so quickly from my fingers, but they’re filling the screen in front of me instead of the space between us on the couch or across the office.

Instead we find our words in the minutes and hours before sleep forces itself upon us.

Inklings of ideas snuffed to silence by a six-year old’s rendition of Annie take shape while the rest of the house slumbers. I’ve come to overlook the TV in the bedroom, one of the things we’ve discussed time and again during the years we’ve been together. Some conversations thrive with the background noise, our laughter mingling with the low rumbling of characters on the screen.

Our fingers, no longer scurrying across a keyboard, find each other. Our hands link and our voices coalesce, and our marriage grows stronger with each conversation in the darkness.

When do you find the time to have uninterrupted conversations with your spouse?

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