Sometimes I think that love has gutted me, I picture myself lying on a counter in the market like filleted flounder. Maria and I have been married for 10 years, and my love for her has only deepened and grown. That is different.

Maria is always Maria, whether she is making Flying Vulva potholders or shoveling manure in the pasture. She often wears her wedding dress to brush the donkeys and shovel manure.

She owns a single pair of jeans, but never thinks of wearing them outside.

If my love has grown, other things have diminished – me mostly. I am older than she is, and I can do less than I used to do. I do plenty, I am quite active, but I accept the things I cannot do as well as the things I can do.

She does more than she used to do, almost every day. I call her my Willa Cather girl, she is my own frontier goddess. I can’t help but think of Cather (My Antonia), when I see Maria with her hat (stolen from me) and shovel, which is almost as big as she is.

Cather wrote about the women who settled the American prairie, they were strong and brave and fiercely independent, like my wife.

I’m not sure how this fits with the life of an artist, but somehow it does. Nature and the farm and the animals nourish and inspire Maria, her $8 Thrift Shop boots are always by the door. She draws strength from the animals, from the physical labor of the farm, from her walks in the woods and great love of nature.

It would never occur to her to be afraid of walking alone in the dark woods.

When I wake up in the middle of the night and Maria is not there, I know she is out walking in the woods in the dark, soaking up the beauty of life in our world.

Willa Cather’s characters remind me of Maria. She is the farm goddess.

Maria is always Maria. She owns no new clothes, and everything she does wear, like her art, is found and redeemed at thrift shops and convenience stories. Her own looks is not like anyone else’s look.

When we first met, I had been living mostly alone on the first Bedlam Farm for six years, I took great pride in doing things for myself, in struggling through the winters alone, in lambing by myself, in shoveling my own manure and cleaning out my own barn. Sometimes I hired help.

But mostly, I didn’t need help.

Being alone was what my life was about, for so many years. I am not alone now.

I can’t do all of those things any more. This has been very difficult for me to accept.

I had open heart surgery four years ago, and also have diabetes. My medications don’t interact well with the sun. I can’t be shoveling heavy stuff like donkey manure.

The statins I take cramp my legs and make walking painful sometimes. I understand that without Maria, I could not live on the farm by myself.

I am fortunate in my health, my heart is strong and my diabetes is firmly in hand, my  sugar blood numbers are usually below 100. I am also getting older, I will be 71 on August 1st. I reject old talk in all of its forms, but i do know where I am, and I know where I am going.

If I have a regret, it is that I could not manage to leave Maria a lot of money so that she wouldn’t have to worry about money if I die first. I had that much money once, but it was gone after my divorce. I have no regrets other than that.

Maria gets angry when I talk like that, she  says she can take care of herself. When she got divorced, she refused to take a penny in alimony or support, even thought she was left with no money at all.  Feminism is not an abstract idea for her, it guides much of her life, as a woman, as an artist. I love being with a person who can shovel manure in the morning and make Flying Vulva potholders in the afternoon.

I know that she can take care of herself, but still, I wish I could have done more.

I write a lot about acceptance. I know it is hard for my friend Ed Gulley to let others take care of him, and I feel the same anguish when I see how hard Maria works on the farm and how much she does that I once could do.

I love who I am now and where I am, I do not ever complain about getting older. But it is painful for me to not be able to do so many of the things I love about having a farm.

We compensate. I do all of the shopping, and when I am not too busy, the cooking. I order hay and firewood, pay the bills, keep track of the cars and their needs.

When we need cleaning supplies, I get them. I do all of the phone work that guides our lives – calling repair people, cleaning the stoves, hiring a house cleaner, chasing down the carpenters and handy men, monitoring our Little Free Library, going to get the mail, getting the oil heater cleaned, hiring snow clearers and landscapers, and ordering things from Amazon.

I do a lot. But she does more and more.

We adjust our lives so that the chores and scut work is shared. I do not expect to be taken care of or wish to be taken care of. But we do live on a farm. I could not plant gardens the way Maria does, or fix the fences the way she can, or dig up the weeds in the pasture.

She is astonishingly strong, athletic and agile. I can’t toss hay bales around or carry huge shovels filled with manure. I can’t move sofas or haul furniture out to the curb. She helps me haul the garbage cans to the dump and sort out the recycling. She does all of these  things with energy and confidence.

Our years together have also been about healing. We were both in pieces when we met, and we take the greatest pleasure and pride in seeing each other put the pieces back, one by one. I could not have done it without her.

Maria is first and foremost an artist, her head and soul are in her art. Whatever we do, we make sure she has the time she needs to do her work. We both work hard and take our work seriously.

Marriage, like any relationship, requires adjustments, evolution, change. It is not a static thing. The true constant is our love and respect for one another. Our willingness to listen to each other. Our support for each other.

This kind of love is new to me, and still something of a shock. I never take it for granted, I never cease to be surprised and grateful for it. I told a friend the other day if I could find it, anyone can find it. It comes when one is open to it.

Shoveling manure is not something most people do happily or cheerfully. I have never heard Maria complain  about it. She talks to the donkeys and sheep while she does it, notices baby birds in the next, and expresses her gratitude for life.

As I have been watching our friend Ed Gulley fail, I am ever more grateful for the time that i have, and the things that I have, most  especially my Willa Cather girl.

Every morning I feel the touch of a beautiful woman, as she holds me near, and lifts me up, drawing my scent and feel into her body. She has taken me home. My Willa Cather girl.