For me, a great marriage is not measured by how rarely one argues but how people handle the arguments they are certain to have. This summer, Maria and I had a long and sometimes tense argument stacking wood, but it was resolved today.

Maria held her ground.

It seems strange for a 74-year-old man to object to his wife single-handedly stacking seven cords of woods by herself over more than two hot and wet summer months.

I thought she was rigid and obsessive about it. Why not get some help?

She was an artist, not an Olympic athlete. She didn’t need to stack all that wood, or so I thought.

And I was also worried about the wood lying around for weeks getting soaked with a hurricane and a ton of rain predicted for tomorrow until she could get to it.

I imagined smoky fires all winter.

Right up the road, we have a small Amish army that could have trotted down here in the buggies and eased her load in an hour for $10, leaving a lot for her to do and still speeding up the process.

I saw that Maria loved doing it, and in recent weeks, and on some level, she needed to do it. It somehow kept her calm and grounded to have physical work to do all summer, even in 100 degree days and soaking rain.

I also worried about her. People throw their backs out all the time, stacking those heavy and increasingly wet logs. She is strong, but not Tarzana.

Perhaps I’m getting more anxious as I get older.

We have a wonderful relationship, but we also have powerful wills, and sometimes here on our beautiful farm, two other kinds of hurricanes bang into one another.

It was sweltering today, 92 degrees and unbearably humid. Maria came into my study, which had the air conditioner on.  She was soaked in sweat and flushed; she looked as if she was about to drop.

“You moved all the rest of the wood into the shed, didn’t you, “I asked, trying not to sound irritated, which I was.

Getting the wood into the shed is important; it needs to dry out and get inside to be ready for the winter, and the loggers didn’t care about what Maria wanted; they had to cut the wood when they could, and we had to take it when they were ready.

There were very few dry days for them to work, and I was worried we wouldn’t have enough wood for the winter. We needed a steady flow. They managed to get a few dry days, and we got our wood.

I also manage the prepare-for-winter cash flow, which requires planning to pay for each load when it came. The loggers don’t take credit cards; we are lucky to have them working for us.

It’s a horror to get caught without wood by October.

It’s my job to get us ready for winter, which involves hay, gravel for the pole barn and driveway, and wood.

It kept bugging me, but I thought about it a lot. Maria has pushed around a great deal in her life by dominating men.

Sometimes, I think she needs to stand up and say, that’s enough. She needs to know how strong she is. I get to decide what I do. That does make sense to me.

“I just had to,” she said, “I had to get them into the shed and under a tarp before the hurricane hits tomorrow.”

We are projected to have Hurricane Henri directly over us tomorrow morning; the odds are good we’ll lose power for a bit; we are ready – flashlights with new batteries, water in the tub, food, and fruit for a few days.

We have seven cords in the shed.

Maria stacked every one of them by herself. I repeatedly suggested hiring some of the Amish kids or Mike, the lawn man, who would be happy to help.

She wanted to do it herself, she said she loves doing it, and she didn’t want any help, not even a small amount. This meant a lot to her. I also came to understand that this is a creative activity for her, she loves stacking the firewood neatly and in a creative way.

Surely it wouldn’t make a difference, I said, if we hired somebody to help speed it along. But it did.

We went back and forth all summer.

This was a rare case where our two iron wills butted into one another, as happens in a marriage. She insisted that she explained it to me, and she is still surprised that I don’t understand.

Last week I relented, not that it really mattered.

We weren’t going anywhere arguing or talking.

Sometimes you have to let go and quit; sometimes, you have to back away even if you don’t quite understand why.

I think the unchecked ego is a great danger to any relationship, and ours are both substantial. I guess it sometimes comes down to who blinks first. Life has humbled mine more than once.

In the end, it was more important to her to stack the wood than I was to argue her into getting help and moving faster.

Today, she came in from stacking the last wood looking like she was about to pass out.  She was soaking with sweat; her hair was glued to her face. She was exhausted.

She leaned over and kissed me on the back of my head.

I felt then that I had done the right thing. One day we’ll talk about it, and she’ll help me understand why it was so important to her and why she fought for it so hard.

I guess that most women will understand, and most men will not—just a feeling. I did some pouting and then shook it all off like a dog coming in out of the rain.

Did it really matter what her reasons were?

We have our hay in the barn, enough (somewhat wet) wood in the shed. Vince came and put fresh gravel into the pole barn. Our house has painted a color we love.

The quartermaster is pleased with himself. He did his job well.  The wood stacker is also proud, and she did do it all by herself.

And what kind of husband wouldn’t be grateful to have to beg his wife not to do the hard chores on a farm alone? Not me, I think. I am a stubborn husband, but not a stupid one.