I love kim because I remember…

61 ...THE FIRST time we went to Kalachandji’s in Dallas. I had gone to the Hare Krishna temple many years before with my parents. I was a teenage member of an interfaith group that visited different places of worship and going to the temple that night was a surreal experience—incense and dim lighting and a giant white statue of a bald man in robes. I didn’t know then that the temple had a beautiful vegetarian restaurant inside, but Kim brought me there not long after I had met her.

We had just begun dating and I wasn’t quite sure what to think of her aside from how gorgeous and cool she was. I remember feeling lucky, like I was dating up the food chain. And that we had so many little things in common that friendship was easy.

We sat in the courtyard of Kalachandji’s surrounded by trees, flowers, and a bubbling fountain. It was a spring day, late in the afternoon and tabla music played softly on the speakers above our heads. I remember being struck by the peace of the restaurant and the beauty of the woman sitting across the table from me. We had a long road in front of us before we got to a loving committed marriage, but that moment fixed the tone for the whole journey.

62 On our first date we ended up at the IHOP on University St. because the second coffee shop we’d visited that night had closed. We sat and talked into the early hours of the morning while great sheets of water slammed into the windows outside. By the time the rain stopped and we were exhausted from talking, it was 3 o’clock in the morning.

63 I remember all that times I’ve eaten at Luby’s Cafeteria with her. It was comfort food for her, since she grew up going there with her Mom and Dad. She always ordered the same thing – a LuAnne platter with fried cod. I learned a lot about her at Luby’s around the city.

64 One of my most vivid memories is sitting in the car at the doctors office while she was inside taking a pregnancy test. We’d used the grocery store test and it had turned up negative, but we had to make sure. We were at a rocky point in our relationship then. After dating for four or five months I had decided to pull away, that it wasn’t going to work out. But as I sat there for a half hour with every scenario playing out vividly in my head, I pictured me and Kim raising a child together and realized that I could spend my life with her. And that it would be a joyful life together.

She wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t tell her about my revelation then, but that was the moment when I decided that I would marry her if she would have me. A year and a half later we were married.

65 I’ve always been struck by her scent—when I would lean closer or stand beside her my nose would fill a musky, sweet, and subtle aroma. We made out for the first time in the back seat of her Saturn and my shirt smelled like her when I drove home. Every breath I took that night carried the feel of her skin against my hands and the warm pressing of her mouth against mine. I wore that shirt for two days without washing it.