In 2010, Maria and I got married.

We had our brief honeymoon – lightning trips have become a hallmark of our feverish lives – at the Grafton Inn, a historic old inn in Grafton Vt.where Ulysses Grant and Daniel  Webster and Rudyard Kipling stayed.

Our honeymoon room was Room 15, which we were told was the actor Paul Newman’s favorite room when he stayed at the Inn, which was often. The Inn was lovingly restored and a bit on the stuffy side – elegant older Wasps filled up the dining room, there was really nobody as frumpy and strange as us.

The staff was friendly, the room quite beautiful. We always ask for Room 15 when ever we visit the inn, which seems heavily geared to weddings now, and is not as funky or intimate.

We take our lightning trips to other places now, but neither of us will forget those sweet nights at this place, so filled with history. We always thought of Paul Newman, too, he believed in doing good rather than arguing about it.

When we left Maria gave me this sketch she made of the room on our honeymoon night, a very special and happy night for us, rich in feeling and hope, a great sense of liberation from the very hard years that preceded it.

We were battered then, we were reborn together.

I put the sketch in my wallet and over these happy years, I mostly forgot about it, it would fall out from time to time, and I would look at it and smile, it always made my heart sing. A month or so ago, it fell out again, and I saw it was beginning to fade. I wanted to preserve it and free it from the tight and mostly invisible confines of my wallet.

Maria signed the sketch and wrote a note on the back, too intimate and accurate to repeat here.

I asked if she would help me get it framed and we took it to our favorite framer, the East Arlington, Vt., Framer. Leslie called us up yesterday and said it was ready, we went to get it today.

We each decided to pay for half of it, of course I had to have it done perfectly on seasoned wood and glare proof glass and with one of the most expensive trims.

It was perfect, it cost $160 the way I did it, and it sits right on my desk where I can see it every day and all day. It brings back the power and joy of that night.

We have been very happy together, but that night, we were happy in a very special way.

We both had given rebirth to our lives, and chose to take this journey with each other, in sickness and health, till death do us part. We had been so discouraged, we were so filled with joy, we still are. I have no reason to ever speak poorly of my life, not matter what happens around me.

I told Maria on our wedding day that I would never hold her to these vows, if she was ever unhappy or unfilled, she should walk away, she was not bound until death.

I don’t worry about that any longer, our love has only gotten richer and deeper, a miraculous turn of life for me and I hope, for her. I no longer fear death much, I have found what I most wanted and never thought I would have.

This sketch is precious to me beyond words, I think the spirit of Maria, always the artist, is all over it. So is our great love.

It is a humble sketch, yet a great work of art.

And I am so happy to report that it finally has the home and place it has always deserved. Love resurrected and renewed, every time I see it.