I’ve come to recognize many of Maria’s faces, although she still has the power to surprise me.

I know this look above fantasy and imagination.

I often see it during breakfast or dinner after she saw or read something that caught her vast and ferociously active imagination.

A new book (I loved it very much, it is remarkable) called The Memoirs Of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller has captured her imagination. I recommended it to her.

it touches on so many themes that are precious to her – especially independence and strength. She always wants to understand just how strong she really is.

I knew the book had hooked her; she stayed up late reading it and woke up thinking about it. During breakfast, she sailed away thinking of a life of independence, courage, and solitude. This is a deep fantasy of hers.

She is happy here on the farm, as am I. Still, Sven’s story of one disfigured man who banishes himself to live a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, and is saved by friends, a good dog, his passion for independence,  and a surprise visitor, got her wheels spinning and fired up her imagination.

When this happens, she is only physically present for a while, as she goes off to the arctic circle for a whole and into the had of this fictional but brilliantly created man.

This is one of her faces I love the most, her whole demeanor changed, and she moves in to the mist of imagination and mystery. I love my portrait series, it offers me a new way of loving Maria again and again.

I suppose if I thought about it, I might wonder if she’d rather be living in the arctic circle than with me. So I won’t think about it. That’s not the kind of man I wish to be.