When I think about it, Maria and I are a great love story, perhaps one of the oldest and best kinds of love stories, the ones they make movies and write books about, the ones we dream about.

I’ve never been into Valentine’s Day, but how can I get through this day without writing about the best love story I know: Maria and me?

It was improbable, a miracle.

It should never have happened. The odds were overwhelmingly against it, we were in the most unlikeliest place for it,  and neither she nor I saw it coming.

Before Maria, I had given up on life and was falling apart. After her, I found got my life back and then some.

I won’t lie to you. I don’t really have words to describe my love for Maria. The subject is so sappy and overdone, that Valentine’s Day makes me wince sometimes

All I can do is tell a smart part of the story, the part that comes to mind, even years later.

When we met, we were both married, unhappy, lonely, and depressed. We both had surrendered much of our lives, each in our own way.

We were both living in a remote town in upstate New York where people are left alone, where there are more cows than people, a place where you go if you never wanted to meet people.

But life has its own ideas: that was where I found the love of my life.

We were both in unhappy, disintegrating marriages. We were lonely and disconnected from ourselves and everyone else.

Maria had abandoned her art, I had abandoned my family.

I was living alone on a sprawling, 90-acre farm with three dogs; writing my books and searching for rebirth. I had left my family and normal life behind.

They were hard and frightening days.

Maria lived in a barn she and her husband were restoring.

She had a bit and wild dog, Frieda, who was to play an essential part in our coming together.

Maria and Frieda were both man-haters, and once we met, Frieda’s life was devoted to eating me and driving me away from Maria, who she loved dearly and protected fiercely.

It was not lost on me that Maria loved the idea of her dog hating men.

Frieda eventually decided to love me, persuaded by a daily dose of beef jerky, and so did Maria, but neither had or has a high opinion of men.

I realized Maria would never come to me without Frieda and would never abandon her. The stakes were high. No Frieda, no Maria.

It was a perfect thing. I had been writing about dogs and learning about them. It took me a year to flip Frieda, but in the end, she bowed to reality and let me in.

I was in awful shape, in the throes of a long and devastating breakdown; Maria was an artist who had left her art behind and suffered for it every minute of every day.

These were the bleakest days of my life, and changing them seemed beyond me.

Apart from being unhappy, nothing about the two of us suggested we had much in common or would ever wind up together.

Nor was either one of us contemplating divorce or separation. We were lost, stuck in depression and anxiety.

I had been living alone for six years, and my wife and I chose to pretend everything was okay; we couldn’t imagine any other response to the growing distance between us.

She loved New York; I loved the country. There was nothing in the middle for us. She never wanted to live up here; I never wanted to return to the suburbs, where I never wanted to live.

We became close friends almost immediately. I saw the artist inside of her needing to come out; she saw the artist in me, wanting to come out.

She also saw a good person beneath the chaos and anger inside of me.

We never imagined being together or leaving our marriages.

It was creativity that brought us together.

She loved my photos (I was struggling to become a photographer), I loved her imagination, and I knew what she needed: I  offered her free use of one of my barns as a studio in exchange for helping me care for the animals on weekends.

We were both broken people who had, in many ways, given up on life, love, and hope.

The barn was a turning point; it brought Maria into my life and gave me a way to see her and talk to her.

She loved having her place to work, her studio. She would often come In the middle of the night to work and eat the food I left behind for her.

I didn’t see her for months at a time.

We became best friends. She supported my photography and saw how important it was.

In truth, this was the wonderful thing about our friendship, and then, our relationship. We always wanted what was best for the other.

We talked so quickly with one another; we each saw deeply into the soul of the other.

I sensed what she wanted and needed most – to be an artist – she saw through my illness and confusion; she cut through all of the crap and looked right into the best parts of me.

She sensed what I needed were help and support.

She reminded me that there were good parts of me, someone as good as she is could love me.

A couple of years later, we were both separated, then divorced. I left a note on her car telling her that I loved her and would wait for her, no strings attached.

We both lived in terror and panic, comforting and listening to each other. We were both starting from scratch, building new lives – new work, new home, new friends, new life.

We were on the hero journey together, each of us the magical helper of the other.

Maria’s ego had been destroyed by life and the oblivious people around her.

My ego was inflated by delusion and panic. We each set about helping each other put the pieces of our shattered lives back together. My tormentors were more openly aggressive, but just as damaging.

First, Maria had to prove to herself that she could take care of herself.

She got a job working with emotionally disturbed people; I went deeply into therapy, recognizing the need to change.

Finally, I had something to fight for. Finally, I felt the power of love. Maria wanted to prove that she could take care of herself. She and Frieda rented a dismal tiny apartment in run-down Granville, N.Y.

I visited her once there, she made me dinner while Frieda glowered at me from underneath the table. I never saw the apartment again.

During a brutal winter, I courted Maria with wine, cheese, chocolate, and the warmth of a good woodstove. My favorite nights were those where it was too cold or stormy for her to go home.

Our friendship was cemented when we decided to work together with our friend Mary Kellogg, the poet we both loved, to publish four books of her beautiful poetry.

Through Maria, we further connected our creative souls and hearts. Together, we explored the healing power of encouragement and creativity. We set about the thrilling business of feeling better and building a good life together.

It was the very essence of romance.

I can’t speak for Maria, but I can say with all honesty that I would not be alive today without her support and love. My indifference to my health opened me up to diabetes and a heart attack.

I had seen no good reason to take care of myself.

Now I had one.

She was there for me, every time and in every way. She still is. Every time I hear James Taylor sing. You’ve Got A Friend by Carole King, I think of Maria. That was here, that was us:

“When you’re down and troubled
And you need some lovin’ care
And nothin’, nothin’ is goin’ right
Close your eyes and think of me?
And soon I will be there.
To brighten up even your darkest night”

When I most needed a friend, she was there; she brightened up even my darkest nights. I think I did the same for her.

Like a beautiful Zinnia, she began to unfold, open up. laugh and smile, speak her truth, grow stronger and happier right before my eyes.

For a long time, I only saw her when she came to help out on weekends in exchange for her studio barn. Would we be together today without that barn?

I don’t think so. I signed up with a great therapist, and begin the painful work of facing the truth about myself.

At my worst, I would count the hours and minutes before Maria would come to help with the animals and grace me with a visit over tea.

That love had not diminished over these ten years; it has only grown deeper, richer, stronger.

She and Frieda moved in, and I set about the process of persuading Frieda not to eat me. It was not easy. I wrote a book about the campaign to win over Frieda, a wild rottweiler and shepherd mix.

The book was called Second Chance Dog. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of beef jerky and this worked with Frieda, who had to be kept in a barn the first year; she was so violently aggressive to my dogs and the animals on the farm.

Frieda reasoned that anyone – even a man – who brought her beef jerky every day couldn’t be all bad. Maria felt the same way about the cheese and chocolate and bread I left in her studio every night for her to find.

It was always gone in the morning.

I told Frieda that we had to work it out, and she heard me, and we dd. My Christmas present to Maria that year was to find Frieda in the house dozing in front of the woodstove when she came home from work on Christmas Eve.

Frieda and I became good friends; in time, she was my dog also, a fierce guardian of our lives and our farm, a hunter of skunks, hedgehogs, and rabbits.

Maria and I married in 2010, after which we filed for bankruptcy after trying unsuccessfully to sell the farm for four years. We just couldn’t afford it.

We were able to move to our new Bedlam Farm soon after.

I think we’re both here for good. It’s my last stand, for sure.

Maria was wrong about herself. She succeeded as a gifted artist who sells her work all over the country through her beautiful blog, fullmoonfiberart.com.

She has evolved into a strong, gifted, open, loving artist and human being. This is the person she always was – I saw it from the first time we met – it had just been buried.

She is the most beautiful partner in life.

I’ve learned a lot about pure love, which is about loving someone more than you love yourself. I will never take this life for granted.

I remember putting on my Merlin wizard’s hat and dancing naked in the snow one bitterly cold morning to persuade Maria that her art was unique and that people would want it and show it. I called myself the Show-You-Art-Guru and her laughter overcame her fear.

Anyone reading this knows the rest.

It wizard dance worked. She made her potholders and sold them; the rest is history. She still doesn’t quite believe it.

Maria returned to her life as an artist making her humble potholders and now making them quilts and fabric paintings.

She has fans and admirers from all over the world.

We both shared a love of animals, which became yet another connection that bound us together.

We fixed up her new studio before moving to the current Bedlam Farm; I knew there would be no more peace otherwise.

The bottom line is that Maria and I saved one another’s lives and helped give rebirth to the other.

The studio here is good for both of us. It offers us a perfect boundary for a relationship that is so close. She always has her place to go. This is where she does yoga, talks to her friends, prepares her art.

This is essential for Maria, as independent as she is loving.

I’ve learned so much from this relationship. I learned to never give up on love. It really is never too late. I was 61 years old when we met.

I’ve learned that I can’t save other people, but I can help them protect themselves. I’ve learned that age doesn’t matter if love is real.

I’ve learned that sex is about creativity and the heart, not age and the body.

I learned that love came to me when I opened up to it. And one thing leads to another. When I opened up to love, I opened up to many other things.

I learned that love heals.

Maria and I belong together; it is a love beyond words. Valentine’s Day comes every Day of my life, and I will never forget it.

This is my Valentine’s Day Love Story, I hope you enjoyed it. It was very important to me to tell it.