A new and interesting friend came over to talk this afternoon and have some afternoon tea on this cold day, she got to talking about the blog and the curious experience we often have of people knowing much about us already when we meet. I told her that I love the blog but am always puzzled by it’s reach and the devotion many people have to it, I don’t really grasp it.

Oh, it’s easy, she said, it’s because it’s a love story. You and Maria.

This surprised me, mostly because it is so obviously true and because sitting in the middle of this swirling vortex that is our life together, I can’t really see it. It is a love story, Maria is the reason I am alive, why we are her at our new farm. The first Bedlam Farm was mine, this farm is special, every inch of it a testament in one way or another to our love for each other.

We have fought hard for this house, in many different ways, and soon I will be able to tell you about them. Not quite yet.

I thought of this morning when I saw my wife through a bridle on her pony and take her for a stroll out of the pasture and out to the front  yard. Chloe, who can be willful about many things, loves to go for walks with Maria, they circle the trees, get used to passing trucks, stop her and there for some grass.

Every day, I watch Maria grow, create, expand her love. Her smile could melt the ice-cap, and even get a willful pony to walk around trees in the cold.

Maria could hardly be more comfortable with any animal than she is with Chloe, who has brought her great strength and an appreciation for her own will and determination. Horses do that for many people, especially women, I am told. Any animals that earns such devotion from cowboys and artistic women is a remarkable creature.

I do love Maria, more all the time, each and every day. I love her when she wears her wedding dress to shovel manure, when she finds crystals in the woods, when she goes out into the cold night in her nightshirt to save a flower, or re-homes a frog or snake.  I love her when she crafts her art in the studio, I love her when we sit and talk, when she kneels down to commune with donkeys, when she loves her friends, when we walk in the woods, wrap ourselves around one another each night and  hang on for dear life, I love it when she opens up her generous heart to the world. Her smile is the most radiant flower I know, and it has opened up my heart and soul to life. I hope I have done the same for her.

I love her for what she endured, what she has become, what she wants to be. It gets better and better.

We are miracles to one another, something we always yearned for but never could find.

We have walked in some awful places. Somehow, our inner souls and spirits survived, somehow we managed to escape a fate so many others have suffered and we kept enough pieces alive inside of ourselves to keep us going until we found one another, and we said, yes, this is it, this is what we have been looking for.

Love is such a powerful thing, I give thanks every single day of my life that I found it before I left the world. Angels do walk the earth, and I married one and live with her now.

I get it, I think. Love stories are the best stories.