Before I met Maria, I did not know there was a Maria. I did not understand sweetness, or what it was or what it means. I did not know many people of such a pure heart, especially people who have not been understood or treated well, and who have every right to be angry and suspicious.
When we first met, Maria was very suspicious, she did not trust men or like too many. I understood intuitively that if I won over her dog Frieda – these were two battered two man-haters who were obsessively loyal and protective of one another – then I might win over Maria. Without Frieda, I didn’t have a prayer.
Maria possesses a sweetness of spirit that was not familiar to me, I had not encountered it close-up in my life, I am still surprised by it, still shake my head sometimes in wonder. This morning, I looked out the kitchen window and I saw Maria knelt over her Rapunzel chair, as she does faithfully every morning, in every kind of weather.
Minnie the barn cat was sitting on the chair, she has taken it over during the day. As Maria wove the baling string into the chair, she and Minnie touched heads, one of the ways in which they talk to each other, two sweet creatures finding communion with one another.
It is the tenderness that breaks our hearts, wrote the author Robert Goolrick. “The loveliness that leaves us stranded on the shore, watching the boats sail away. It is the sweetness that makes us want to reach out and touch the soft skin of another person. And it is the grace that comes to us, undeserving though we may be.”
Maria says I am a nurturing person, but I am not a sweet person, and I imagine I will never be a sweet person. There is too much anger and wariness in me, although both are diminishing over time. I am older than she, I am a man, two strikes. Somehow, Maria was able to preserve the sweetness and generosity of spirit, I think she walled herself up inside a shell, like a turtle, and bided her time. When she emerged, her sweet soul was intact.
Life is like that sometimes, I withdrew into myself as a small child, and stayed curled up even now. Maria often says parts of me are closed up, parts of me are open. Maria’s spirit has suffused the farm with The Sweetness, it is a part of the place, and of our lives with animals.
It is hard to forget pain, but even harder to remember sweetness, I think. We have no wounds or scars to show from happiness. There are no statues to peace.