I met her in a friend's dorm room at UT in 1980 and, not soon enough, I asked her out. And we drove. First to dinner at Wilson's restaurant in Townsend for fried chicken and country ham. It was a booth over to the left. As we talked and talked and talked, a button was pushed in me. You see, I'm what's called a Whiskey Priest, a term from Graham Greene's 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory. It has come to define well-meaning followers of Jesus who are idiots... me.
With her never-ending kindness, Kathie, the button-pusher, reached over that booth with her words and touched a goodness in me which was (and still is to a degree) hidden. She pressed a seed into my ground. She didn't make it grow, but she put it there.
Leaving most of our food on the plates, we lowered ourselves into my cheap-ass Toyota Corolla and wound our way through the mountains for hours on end. I heard about her twin siblings, her love of beauty and all the things a 20 year-old woman dreams of. Kathie heard about my dad-less family, my love for the risky and all the things I hope for too.
At 3am we found ourselves back on campus walking and talking. The back of our hands kept bumping against each other sending shock waves through me. I reached and she took hold. 44 years ago.
She didn't kiss me that night. (I tried but only the cheek was offered). I picked her up a few hours later when it was daylight and we headed back to our mountains. By a creek near Elkmont we set up her camera for this shot in my blue coaches shorts. Five weeks later I asked her to marry me.
