It was an odd thing to think at that moment, but I couldn’t help thinking it. I married very well. We went out to check the fence where the bear entered our pasture after being killed. With two broken legs and a crushed shoulder, he managed to drag himself over our tight mesh fence to get into our pasture and pushed out all of the staples but one.
I was about to reach for my cell phone and call Todd Mason, our friend and fence-builder. I was thinking about how we could seal off this pasture and keep the animals away from the fence. I am good at calling people to fix things, not so good at fixing things.
We needed to get the fence tightened or we’d have sheep and donkeys and ponies wandering around a busy road.
Maria said “wait a sec,” and went back into the farmhouse, returning with a hammer and a box of staples I didn’t know we had. Dressed in her wedding dress, in which she performs many farm chores, she whipped out a hammer, leaned into the fence and hammered in the staples.
It took her about three minutes.
I felt like I was in some kind of inverse, post-modern John Wayne movie. What a woman, I thought. She is smart, gifted, versatile. And also beautiful. I half expected her to whip out a rope and lasso her pony. But no, she is an artist, a gentle and poetic soul.
She has it all, even if she often does not know it.
A few minutes later, she was out in the garden pulling up a potato, then in her studio putting together some work of art. I do very few things well, and none of them have to do with hammers and fences and staples, or potatoes either, it would never have occurred to me to fix the fence myself. It never occurred to Maria to do anything else.
On the way out of the pasture, she stopped to cuddle with the donkeys and kiss Chloe, the pony on her nose. I got a hug and kiss also.
I think I was nearly speechless at the sight and meaning of this, although I did do what I am good at, I pointed the camera at her while she repaired our fence and pushed the shutter. We all have to do what we can do.
Maria is a person of many parts, part Frida Kahlo, part Willa Cather, the fiercely independent artist, the tough pioneer woman.
I will never quite understand how this happened, how we came to be in a remote town in upstate New York, met one another, clung to each other for dear life. Is this really my story? Did I know what I was doing? Or are the angels sitting up their with their Ipads, moving the pieces of life from one place to another.