“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.” 

— Willa Cather, My Antonia

This is my favorite Willa Cather quote, it reminds me of Maria and her love of her life, and her completeness and happiness as an artist, a lover, and a partner.

Whatever we had missed, whatever we had lost, we now possess together, the precious, the incommunicable present.

That is happiness, I think, to be absorbed by something complete, something great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as breathing.

Maria agrees that she would have made a wonderful Willa Cather prairie wife, except her career as an artist might have been hard. With no Internet, there would be no way to sell her fiber art, but I’m sure she would have found a way.

Maria and I balance once another perfectly. The few times I’ve tried to stack or cut wood have been disastrous. Once I nearly chopped off a foot, I’ve smashed my toes dropping heavy wood on them, strained my back, and end up with splinters or mosquito bites.

The wood I managed to stack usually falls over.

My wife has no such difficulties. She is lean and wiry, has boundless energy, knows how to stack corners the right way, and tosses heavy logs around like they were sponges.

She loves to work and loves to be outdoors, and relishes the hard, sometimes gritty, chores of the farm. Heat doesn’t bother her, nor do bugs.

I had no sense of this when I met Maria 12 years ago, I only knew her as a brooding and shy artist who yearned to be free to do her art. She was wary of manual labor when I met her, and skipped it for a while.

Now, manual labor is her choice, no one else’s, and she relishes it. I am always in awe of how we fit so well and easily together, I am nothing but lucky.

She never gets a splinter, drops one on her foot, or wrecks her back. So far, she’s stacked five cords of firewood, we are just about ready for the last two. I expect them to come sometime next week.

Our shed is almost full and when the wood comes, we will be set for winter. Hay in the barn, the shed filled with wood for the stoves.