Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [5]
As we walked through town, my sweating had nothing to do with the fact that it was 100 degrees. I tried to get Liz to the spot I’d randomly chosen that morning from the map we were given at our hotel, but she insisted on stopping at every shop along the way. It was so her. I kept my hands in my pockets, trying to hide the fact they were shaking uncontrollably, my right hand clutching the ugly green and white marbled cardboard box that held my promise to Liz. We finally reached Durbar Square, an historic area in the middle of Kathmandu known for its Hindu temples and wondrous architecture. It was obvious Liz was hot and tired, mostly because she kept bitching about both, and her complaining was making me even more nervous. I saw the perfect spot to sit her down and give her the ring, and I suggested we climb the steep stairs up to a temple.
“It’s way too hot and the steps are too big for my short legs,” Liz said. “Besides, there are monkeys everywhere. I’m not going near those damn things.” I pleaded with her to climb up with me, but there was no convincing her. She insisted that it was time to go back to our hotel. I started to panic.
“Liz…” I rarely began a sentence with her name, so she knew I was serious. “Can we please just sit down in the shade before heading back to the hotel!” I said this with the kind of frantic urgency usually reserved for demanding that some awful pop song playing in her car be turned off before my ears started bleeding. So she agreed.
We were now as alone as we could be in such a public place, and I had to do something to stop my hand from shaking. I pulled the box from my pocket, and without a word I handed it to Liz. She looked more surprised than I’d ever seen her, and without opening it she said, “Oh my God! You bought me earrings!”
I just shook my head. “Open it.”
She lifted the top of the box and immediately started crying. And screaming. Her high-pitched screams attracted the attention of everyone within earshot, including a man sweeping the inside of the temple who poked his head out of a door to make sure everything was okay.
I smiled, knowing that I had succeeded in making her happy, and I was thrilled that my vision had mostly been realized. She couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d told her I was a woman. I wasn’t sure this was how Liz had pictured her engagement when she dreamed of it as a little girl. We were both unshowered, wearing white T-shirts (mine with yellow stains under the arms), and looking as jet-lagged as we felt, but for us it was the most perfect imperfect moment.
We decided to get married in our hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, so that our friends and family wouldn’t have to travel to attend, and we set a date of August 13, 2005. I’m not a superstitious guy, but I suggested we choose a different date, reminding Liz that our anniversary would eventually fall on a Friday. But she said, “I checked out the Farmer’s Almanac, and the thirteenth of August is historically the best Saturday of the month, weather-wise.” Holy shit. I should have known. She had seriously examined the historical weather patterns to ensure perfection. She was a masterful planner, and for this wedding to be a success she had to be. We were living in Los Angeles, but for eight months leading up to the wedding, Liz was traveling each week to Connecticut for work, all while planning our wedding in a third state. To no one’s surprise, and with very little help from me, she executed it perfectly. It was elegant, beautiful, and dreamlike, just like Liz.
Surrounded by more than two hundred of our favorite people, we put a label on the love we’d felt for each other from the first moment of our second meeting. I can still see the huge smile on her face, her body wrapped in a cloud of white, and her feet