Happy Anniversary Chimpy!

Today marks a special day in the PaNaMa household. Six years ago, I looked into Pa's eyes (as best as I could because the sun was in my own) while I held his hands and said "I do." And while the day also marks the anniversary of our country's most devastating tragedy to date, Pa and I still manage to celebrate quietly, albeit indulgently.

We stayed here last night, which at one point had been made famous by David Lynch as its exterior was The Great Northern Hotel in Twin Peaks. I spent Saturday afternoon getting pampered (or marinated, as Pa calls it) in the Spa and then we ate dinner while watching a glorious sunset over the Olympics--the sky colored brightly in popscicle orange and azure.

Mr. Na spent the night with his Nana, but Pa picked him up this morning where we three ate the most gi-normous three-course breakfast. (Two of my three courses are in the fridge and will be consumed later in the day). Afterwards, we headed to the airport so Pa could catch his flight to Italy.

Hard to believe we've been married for six years and tomorrow will mark eight years to the day we met, when, oddly enough, he had just returned from Italy, Paris, Germany and Austria. We met at intermission during the one-man show Keuroac at the Velvet Elvis . Afterwards, mutual friends of ours were getting together at the Garage and he offered me a ride since my car was parked at Harbor Steps. As we drove to Capitol Hill, he turned his CD player on and out of the speakers rose the most horrid sound I had ever heard.

"What IS this crap?" I asked, as I curled up into a little ball on the passenger seat to ward off the offensive noise.

"It's Jovanotti," he replied.

"Jova-who?"

"He's big in Italy."

"And David Hasselhoff is big in Germany," I thought.

On our next date, however, (which I guess was considered our first "official" date) I had a chance to peruse his CD collection at home, where I found a lot of R.E.M., INXS, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Peter Gabriel. The clincher was that I believed he might have been the only other person on the planet to own Material Issue's International Pop Overthrow. I pretty much knew--then and there--that our collections might blend nicely together.

But there's so much more that I love about this man I married. It'd be trite just to say, "Oh yeah--he's smart and funny"; but this is a guy who studies Natural Language Processing AS A HOBBY and once Dave Eggers found out he had written this, he said, "Dude, that was you? That was AWESOME!"

But deeper still, he's a man who inspires me every single day. He's so incredibly passionate and committed to everything he touches, it makes me tired just to watch him and at times all I can do is stand there in awe. I've seen him transform our house into the most beautiful home with his own hands. I've travelled across the world with him--from Australia to Paris, London, Prague, and Ukraine--where I watched him connect with a little boy that would soon become our son. I've mourned with him through the four gut wrenching years of infertility where he agonized over injecting me with drugs day after day and stood by my side through our losses.

It hasn't always been easy and we've had our share of fights that would make anyone recoil; but I wouldn't trade places with anyone in the world. Without him, there'd be no Aspen in Chains, Jazz Dog, Petrospectives, or Coney Dog Bowl. No one would be wondering, late at night, how credit unions made money. There'd be no Chester and Baby. And my three year-old son wouldn't be saying "That's comedy, Mom!" to my jokes.

As I write this, my husband is somewhere over the Atlantic--probably sleeping--though he may be developing another list. I hate when he travels without me (partly out of missing him and partly because I wanna go too!) but even more so today since it's our anniversary (and--yeah, the whole 9/11 thing kinda creeps me out too). But we had a great weekend and the best thing about his leaving is, as he tells me and Mr. Na, "Papa always comes back!"