It was so cold that the water pump to the pasture, which is out in the big barn, right next to the heated water bucket froze, it would likely mean we have to carry buckets of water out to the animals several times a day until Spring. Outside water lines that freeze in January or February usually stay frozen until the spring thaw.

The water runs from a water line in the basement underground to the barn, where it can be pumped out. It’s simple to fill the big heated tank out in the pasture. I had a mild panic when I heard it was frozen.

A few minutes later, I heard Maria shout “it’s running again.”

Maria went into the basement, hooked up a hairdryer, and warmed up the knob. The water started flowing again.

It took her about three minutes to figure this out and fix it as I was upstairs cringing at the thought of trying to get a plumber here. There is a lot of very cold weather in the forecast ahead.

The temperature has just soared to a balmy 14 degrees. The winter storm arrives at 7 p.m. tonight, more cold, more ice.

My heart sank at the disruption this would cause, and then I gave some thought to the many advantages of living with a strong woman – physically and emotionally. I hear often from women that men are threatened by strong women and are often quick to abuse them,  undermine or diminish them.

That’s a tragedy for men as well as women.

I have always believed in feminism. I always thought it was good for me. It made sense; women as equals do not frighten or threaten me. Maria’s strengthen and competence are important to me, and to the farm.

Feminism is good for women, obviously, but it is also good for men, which isn’t as widely acknowledged or understood.

Our world is difficult and complicated. All of us can use all of the help and support we can get.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about feminism this year because of my Amish writing. As many of you know, the Amish are patriarchal, and several women were upset with me for not writing more critically about that. It was almost impossible to discuss the issue with the women messaging me.

They accused me of being just another man in the grip of white privilege, and this ignorant and unworthy of talking to. The conversations were aborted before they ever occurred. None of them had much interest in communicating with me, that’s the thing about labels, they make it easy for us to tag one another and dismiss other people’s feelings and thoughts.

The Amish ideas about patriarchy are one of the most fascinating things about their culture, and I hope one day to discuss it with more women. I have met powerful and very proud women in Amish families, and their ideas about patriarchy and their own lives are worth listening to.

My goal in writing about the Miller family was to understand them, not investigate or condemn them.

Men rarely speak to women directly about issues relating to strength and equality, and women have increasingly given up talking to men at all. Some women have told me that men shouldn’t even be allowed to write about women. Why not spread sexism all over the globe?

Women and men in our culture talk about each other all the time, but rarely to each other.

This is the same problem that afflicts open conversations about race. It’s like walking in a minefield. Everyone says there ought to be more dialogue, but nobody seems to want to have any. And woe to anyone who makes a misstep. They are likely to be reviled all over the Internet.

Women are understandably sick of us men and wary.

Men are frightened and threatened after so many years of domination, abuse, and, yes, privilege. They don’t want to give up any of their power.

I believe much of the Trumpist insurrection stems from men’s feelings of displacement by women and minorities. They aren’t giving up without a fight. They don’t want things to change. A lot of men tell me that women are taking their work and power away.

This is heartbreakingly said, for them as well as for the women they dismiss in this way.

Maria’s strength has enriched and supported my life in every way. She is not a Superwoman, she is just a woman – strong, empathetic and supportive. And she is not poor Maria, working so hard. She is proud Maria, living her life.

I could no longer live here on the farm without her. The other day, a fierce cold wind blew our garbage cans over and sent the garbage flying all over the road and the front yard. I looked out the window – there was ice everywhere – and saw Maria rushing back and forth to capture the garbage and return it to the can.

I rushed out to help her but was stopped instantly in my tracks by an ocean of slick, hard ice.

I know what a broken hip or leg would do to me and our life together here, I had to walk backward slowly to get to safe ground. Without a complaint, she collected all of the strewn garbage and got it back into the cans just as the garbage truck rolled up and took over.

If she weren’t here,  racing around the yard in -7 weather, that garbage would be there for quite a while, maybe even until Spring.

Another storm is coming tonight.

Maria keeps my creativity, my writing, and my independence going.

I could not have gone into that dank and cold basement this morning and figured out what the problem was and fixed it so readily. She saw that the wind was coming through some cracks in the foundation bricks and blocked that.

She had a hairdryer (she doesn’t dry her hair) ready and plugged in down in the basement.

She stuffed the cracks with bubble wrap and plastic. She saved us months of bucket-hauling to the pasture.

This sort of thing is repeated all of the time now. She fixes things, carries things,  hauls wood and bales of hay, and makes beautiful art.

As I age, there are fewer and fewer physical things I can help out with. She understands that, and due to her support, I can do my work and write better than ever and live my life. We don’t have to give up our beautiful life together.

I support her in several different ways, as she does out of her way to point out whenever I feel guilty and sorry for myself.

Her strength is not just physical, of course, but mental. Someone on my blog wrote about “poor Maria” the other day and said she needed an assistant.

That is very far from the truth.

There is no “poor Maria,” only a strong one doing what she loves to do, caring for the animals she loves to watch for, and above all, working full-time as an artist doing the work she loves to do.

She would hate being pitied, in large part because this is the life she chose and the life she wants. I support her in every possible way. Paula, my first wife, also enthusiastically and without complaint,  supported my quitting corporate life to write, even though it was a huge risk for us.

I doubt I would be a writer without her support and encouragement.

She even bought a desk and chair so I could finish my first novel. She could have stopped it all in its tracks.

I owe almost all of the good things in my life to strong women, including my very troubled mother, who told me time and time again that I was a gifted writer and could write books if I wished.

If men ever ask me what I think of feminism and the strong women it has liberated and unleashed, it would be this: Take your heads from of your asses and look up at the stars.

Feminism is one of the best things that ever happened to men.

It can save them, support them and liberate them because our dirty little secret is that many good men are just as oppressed and suffocated and undermined as many good women have been. Two strong people are better than one, or none. We don’t need to fight for the right to bear all of our burdens ourselves.

Maria and I are in this together; we both know what it is like to be imprisoned by convention and callousness and abuse.

Feminism has been good for her and good for me. The stronger she gets, the stronger I get in more ways than I can count.