Love in a Global Village: A Celebration of Intercultural Families in the Midwest

Part of the Family: Kim & Um

Part of the family kim& umeeta Kim & Umeeta. Photo by Christy Mock. he first time we visit Kim Kranich and Umeeta Sadarangani, we have difficulty finding our way because we are driving after a record snowfall that slows us down considerably and obscures our view of the road. When we arrive, Kim is still out shoveling snow — trying to get the last bits of ice off the front walk. Umeeta has just made a fresh pot of coffee and is sending an Internet message to her family in Bombay. The interior of the house is sunny, the glare from the snow reflecting cheerfully on the white walls inside. Theirs is a new house in a new neighborhood, and Kim, who works with public radio, and Umeeta, a literature teacher at a nearby community college, have moved in recently. But the place already feels comfortable, lived in, perhaps because of the smell of coffee and the colorful, eclectic personal effects scattered around the kitchen: mugs, flyers, books, mail. It may be Kim and Umeeta’s unequivocal welcome of even such inquisitive strangers as we are, or their obvious happiness in this house together as they settle down at the table to talk to us. The couple met on October 11, 1991, National Coming Out Day, at Penn State, where Kim was working and Umeeta was attending graduate school. Kim was standing in the crowd at a rally where Umeeta was handing out flyers for a small group meeting that would take place a week later. Kim signed up, and when Umeeta called to remind her, they ended up talking for forty-five minutes. Umeeta remembers that Kim had a cold. “I said, ‘I wish I had a car. I’d come and make you a cup of tea.’” She smiles, recalling their early flirtation. At that first meeting, Kim and Umeeta talked again and decided to attend a benefit together. Not until after the benefit did they realize they’d been on a date. That evening, another woman, assum- { Kim & Umeeta } 33 T ing that Kim and Umeeta were a couple, asked them how they had met. Without skipping a beat, the two made up a long, romantic story together about finding each other through a classified ad and falling in love, a collaboration that unveiled their mutual attraction . Three days later, Kim and Umeeta were on their way to the blissful state they’d described in their story. They went to dinner and coffee, but, says Kim, “I couldn’t eat a thing.” That Friday, Kim showed up at Umeeta’s house with a tape full of love songs and then on Saturday with some chocolate kisses, her hands behind her back. “Do you want chocolate or regular?” Kim asked. “Chocolate,” said Umeeta, who didn’t get the joke. “I was really disappointed,” says Kim, “but then she figured out what I was trying to say when she saw the candy.” “And I said, ‘Can I change my mind?’” Umeeta contributes. Pretty soon, Kim was spending much of her time at Umeeta’s place, which she remembers as very different from her own. “It was cluttered with pictures, and it smelled different, too — like incense — and there were scarves everywhere.” In contrast, she says, her own apartment was well equipped, nice television and stereo system, but still somehow “depressing, spare. Not even intentionally spare but like-there-were-things-missing spare.” “It was as though she had not made her home her own in any way,” Umeeta reflects. “That was my background,” Kim shrugs. Are you a Garrison Keillor Midwestern Lutheran type? we joke, thinking of his stoic, restrained characters. “Actually,” Kim says mildly, “I am Lutheran.” Despite the spareness of her own life, or perhaps because of it, 34 { Part of the Family } Kim felt happy and comfortable spending time among Umeeta’s scarves and photographs — her own clothing now suffused with the smell of incense and Indian cooking. In a matter of weeks, Kim was all but living in Umeeta’s apartment. “She would go home on Sunday,” Umeeta remembers, “just so we could say she still had her own apartment.” By March, they’d given up the Sunday charade, and, the following June, they moved into a townhouse together. One year later, Kim and Umeeta had a commitment ceremony, one in keeping with the first moments of their courtship. They...