PANNING
For Aluminum

I agreed to write this post under the influence of 4th anniversary sentimentalities. “Will it be sappy?” Darren asked. “Of course!” I replied. Last weekend we sat around a campfire and watched the sap sizzle. We talked about how grumpy we’d been with each other since our (self-titled) aluminum anniversary. “That’s just because we only have a bachelor’s degree in marriage,” Darren said. “We’re just switching programs to start our master’s program now and it’s always a little rough transitioning to a new program.” As for me, I plan to take this thing on to the PhD level here in a few years. Imagine what life will be like when we can actually start practicing!

It’s strange to think back to the beginning – when the first thing I noticed was a pair of eyebrows across a crowded room. We fanned our feathers for a while in an attempt to impress one another with all we had read, seen and done. Then came the big first Valentine’s Day fight when all hope was lost and I fled back to my NY friends - declaration of singlehood in hand. That is until the next day when Darren won me back with a few simple lines over e-mail. That’s what keeps this show on the road. I get hoppin’ mad and swear up and down that I’ll never give him the time of day again and then he gives me a look or a light touch on the shoulder and I’m a bowl of mush.

“The nice thing about the rest of our lives is that we have a whole lifetime of weekends ahead of us,” Darren commented on our drive out to camp in the Cascades. I agreed and wiped what looked like a grasshopper leg off his glasses as we hiked up the trail dodging steaming mounds of unhealthy looking bear dung. An hour later he tenderly reached over and plucked “leftover cricket butt” off my cheek. You have to admire the kind of guy who would stick around a girl with cricket hindquarters mashed up on her face – or at least the kind of guy who would make that sort of thing up.

In the end we let the campfire go out on its own with admonishments from Smokey Bear ringing in our consciences. It was dark and the night was cold and I thought I heard bear noises behind me. What followed was a very long Blair-Witch-Project-esque night in which I shot up with every creepy night noise, clapped my hands and commanded those bears to “Get out of here!” in my sternest Grizzly Man voice (but that didn’t work out so well for him then did it?). But it was Darren who would venture out to retrieve a torch from our smoldering fire and state once and for all that there was nothing beastly in sight. And then he woke up in the morning and cooked me breakfast too.

Darren recently graduated with his master’s degree from Columbia University with a 4.0 GPA (actually it was higher than that but he won’t tell me how high). I have a feeling that he’s going to score even higher when we wrap this program up. How’s that for sappy?