"You and I. . ."

". . .In a little shop,
buy a bag of balloons
with the money we've got."

There is a moment with EKG that I will always remember. (I'd link to her, but I'm too lazy to hunt up one of her modern blogs. Scan my archives and you'll find a link somewhere.)

I was in Florida with her and a rather large crew of other people. We were sharing a huge multi-bedroom condominium on the 14th floor, overlooking the Destin beach. At the time we were living 6 hours away from each other and saw each other once a month if we were lucky. And I'm not too proud to say it, we were very much in love. It was October, a few years back. It seems like an age, now.

We had been in each other's arms as much as possible for most of the weekend, and my 'no kissing' restriction (I told you it was a long time ago) was still in full effect, to her frustration.

I borrowed a short wetsuit and went swimming, the morning before we left. And when I finished, I went back to the beach and I wrote in the sand with my cupped hand. Gouging out tracks to create letters 8 feet high and as temporary as sunset, to be erased on the evening tide.

The letters I scrawled--"I LOVE MY KAWAII GIRL"--were completely legible from the balcony of our Condo.

For those of you that don't know, Kawaii is a Japanese word. It has a definition in the Urban Dictionary.

It was a reference we had shared. The word fit her, perfectly.

When I returned to the condo I discovered that none of our rather large party (12 people? Maybe more?) had been watching the beach when my temporary graffiti was in progress, and so I kept my mouth shut and waited for it to be noticed.

After a while, someone went out to the balcony and noticed the writing. Someone else joined them and soon there a half a dozen people had come to the rail and talked about the words below. I was standing in the kitchen with her when one of the other girls, in a thick southern accent, asked "What's Ku-way-ee mean?" and the comment came floating out of the conversation on the balcony. My EKG looked askance at me and I nodded my head in the direction of the balcony. "Go see for yourself."

She walked out and I moved and stood waiting in the hallway from the kitchen.

I'll remember forever the way she turned from the rail and the happiness in her eyes. Real. Genuine. Holy.

She ran to me, and if things had been different we would have kissed then, but it would be a few months before I would remove that romantic embargo. But the embrace we shared there was worth a lifetime of pain. It certainly paid an advance on the agony of the trip home, when dramatics from another member of our group put us all on pins and needles for the last few hours she and I had together before she returned to Alabama and I went back to Macon.

She was my Kawaii Girl.

Now she is my ex. So now you know how she got her nickname. For me EKG isn't a medical reference at all, even though it has everything to do with the heart.