I remember very well the first time your mother and I ever kissed. I’ve just been running in the park across the street from my apartment and I ran past the precise spot where Anne and I first kissed, nine months and twenty-four days ago. This park has a four mile circular path through the woods that I run around, and it is a pretty walk through trees and underbrush. On September 2 last year, Anne and I went for a picnic in that park, and walked down that path. It was our first “date”.
The point where the path hits the road my apartment faces is at the top of the hill, so both directions of the path tend downwards from here. Anne and I walked down the path, looking at the foliage and talking. I was very proud of living near such beauty, though now I see that such beauty is everywhere, if only my eyes are open to it. We walked a couple of miles down the path, looking for a likely picnic spot, when we spied a deer. It was a beautiful doe, oblivious to our presence, eating at greens that poked through the fallen leaves on the floor of the woods. She was only thirty feet or so away from us, off the path on the downslope side. Anne and I watched her, transfixed by the wonder of coming upon another creature, seeing her eat in precise, delicate motions, stepping lightly over branches as she looked about occasionally before resuming her dinner. We watched for a long time and then, catching each others eye quietly returned the way we had come, leaving our deer friend in peace. We walked back up the path a while, finally spreading out the picnic supper Anne had brought on a flat place in the path, which overlooked the bay. From our picnic we could see Hoover Tower at Stanford and the water of the bay and the distant hills over on the East Bay. We ate hummus, tabouli and feta cheese in pita bread, with Calamata olives and the most wonderful grapes. I can still remember how good those grapes tasted and I wrote Anne a poem about them. We talked. We talked about ourselves. You don’t have to talk about dreams if you feel them. I’ll say more about your mother later; she is my very good friend, and is a very good person, perhaps better than she knows. We both liked each other a lot but also were scared of being hurt, of hurting someone. So we talked of our families, of what we’d done when we were in school. I’d just found out the day before our picnic that I was going to get to go back to college to finish up my degree, so I talked about that, maybe I said how nervous I was about returning.
We ate and watched the bay and watched the sky fade from blue to deep purple as the sun set and the stars came out. It was beautiful. Finally it got pretty dark and we got up and put away our picnic stuff, and we set out back up the trail to go back to my place.
We walked side by side in the twilight, the path almost a memory beneath our feet, saying little, enjoying each other’s company. The path wound through trees overhanging and hiding the sky. We walked with each other in the darkening woods, and we stepped into a part of the trail where there was an opening in the tree cover, where we were lit by star light beneath the opening in the woods above. We stood beneath the stars, looking at each other in their faery light, and we kissed, coming together as we held each other in nature beneath heaven.
That was our first kiss.
26 June 1995
[From my diary, on the 23rd anniversary of our first date.]