The Enchanted (or Enchanting) Thai Restaurant - Posted by Harry

On our first date (Date 1, not Date 0 which was a getting-to-know you meeting at Starbucks), Sally and I ate at a Thai restaurant in her town. The restaurant is a small, unpretentious, family-run business that has a very neighborhood feel, meaning that locals tend to dine here more than visitors. The food is not brilliant, but it's often very good, and reasonably priced. The decor is eclectic southeast-Asian and whimsical: full-sized wooden statues of Buddhist figures, pulsing light balls, temple prints, family photographs, etc. It's a family-run business.

Something happened on that first night. I felt so at ease and close with Sally as if I had known her all my life. The restaurant was casual and packed with diners, and yet somehow intimate, conducive to talking, to learning more about one another and simply feeling romance, intense attraction, desire, joy. It may sound cliched but there was incredible energy and magic between us in that place, in that moment. I felt blessed and grateful, deeply grateful, and I have felt that way ever since.

We have returned to the restaurant many times in the nearly three years since we first ate there (we met in early December), and every experience is concatenated from that first time. We ate there again last Saturday, and I always feel the mood and charm of our beginning, and the present moment, as we talk, and drink wine, and share our duck and seafood dinners. I'm reminded of paleolithic tribes carrying a coal or embers from their last fire as they migrated across frozen wastes to the cave or outcropping where they would then light their next fire. This ember was our first night at the Thai restaurant, and even though we've had warm fires ever since, I always sense the glow of that ember whenever we enter through the screened door.