Last month, at a small inn in Kyoto, I watched an American man introduce himself to his wife every morning. My wife and I were there for a weekend. They were at the next table at breakfast. He was 88. Tall in the way old Navy men stay tall. She was 85. White hair, pearl earrings, and the brightest eyes in the room. The first morning, he stood up when she came in. Pulled out her chair. Held out his hand. "Good morning, ma'am. I'm Harlan. I'll be showing you around Kyoto today." She shook it. Politely. Like you shake hands with a stranger. "How nice. Are you married, Harlan?" "Yes, ma'am. To the prettiest girl in Nebraska." "Well," she said. "Lucky girl." The innkeeper told us later. Her name is Peggy. They have been married for sixty years. She has Alzheimer's. Every morning, she wakes up and he is a stranger. In 1966, Harlan was a young Navy officer stationed in Japan. Peggy flew over to marry him. They spent their honeymoon at this exact inn. She fell in love with the moss garden out back. She said it was the quietest green she had ever seen. On the last day, she wrote in the guestbook. Then she told him, "Bring me back here when we're old." He said he would. Then life happened. Four kids. A farm. Fifty-nine years of next year. Last year, the doctor told Harlan there wasn't much time left before she wouldn't be able to travel at all. So he kept his promise. Every morning at breakfast, Harlan opened a little photo album he had made himself. And he told her their life. Like a story. Like it happened to two other people. How they met at a church dance in 1964. How she stepped on his foot on purpose to get his attention. How he proposed with a ring that cost eleven dollars. The farm. The kids. The year the hail took the whole crop, and she made pancakes for dinner for a month and called it an adventure. She listened like it was a movie. She laughed at the funny parts. She cried at the sad ones. At the end, she always asked the same thing. "What a lovely story. Is it true?" And he always said: "Every word." On their last day, the innkeeper brought out an old leather book. The guestbook from 1966. She opened it to a page near the back and set it in front of Peggy. There, in faded blue ink, in a young woman's handwriting: "We'll come back when we're old. — Peggy & Harlan" Peggy read it. She touched it with one finger. She didn't recognize her own handwriting. "What a lovely couple," she said. Harlan looked at the page for a long time. "They were," he said. That evening, I saw them in the moss garden. Sitting on the wooden bench, watching the light go. Peggy was holding his hand. She looked down at it. Then up at him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know who you are." He nodded. He'd heard that before. "But my hand does," she said. "My hand remembers you." The next morning, before they left, I asked Harlan how he does it. Every single morning. Starting over. He smiled like I had asked him something very easy. "She fell in love with me once when she didn't know who I was," he said. "I figured she could do it again." Then he looked over at her, at the front door, waiting in her pearl earrings. "Most men only get to meet the love of their life once. I get to meet her every morning."