I’ve taken a lot of photos of Maria, but this is my favorite, I just brought it home.

I brought it to my printer, Carolyn Brogan of the Image Loft in Manchester, Vermont, and her very skilled associate Sandy.

It cost $197.53 and when I got it home, I pulled open the plastic cover and took this picture of the portrait, still wrapped up.

The portrait is 6 x9 plus 1 inch borders. It is a fine art print, on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, as all of my photos are, cotton acid free paper, archival ink, Conservation Custom Framing. The best.

It is now hanging above my desk in my study, and every time I look up at it my heart rises and my soul sings.

The picture captured a bit of the complexity of this strong yet gentle woman, my wife. She is full of emotion, surprises and artistic impulses, they go surging through her like water pumped furiously through a small pipe. At the moment, she is falling in love with our snail, Socrates.

This might seem startling to other people, but it is not surprising here.

I see Maria sitting and starting at him, drawing  him, reflecting on his amazing ability to move and float up and down, drawing him, talking to him. Today she told me she is sure he knows when she is in the house, he sort of dances up and down when she is there. This does seem to be true.

It would be quite ironic if I were abandoned for a snail, but it did occur to me that this could be serious, she loved the “Shape Of Water” which we both saw together. She is quite capable of falling in love with a snail.

I remember the first time Sally Hawkins saw the “monster” in the water, it is the same look Maria has when she is looking at Socrates.

Soon Socrates will be a piece of art in some way, and this too shall pass. Maybe I’ll be a piece of art one day too.

Maria has a million infatuations – trees, flowers, animals, people, hills and desserts, rocks and trees. She loves life, completely and fully. I think she even loves me, another of the strange creatures in her life, and we are beyond infatuation now, we have been together for 10 years, each one better than the one before it.

Watching her evolve over these past ten years is like watching a never-ending burst of shooting stars or comets blazing quickly over the sky.

Carolyn is, along with Sandy, an amazing printer and framer. She prints ever photo I sell, and makes me look better than I am.

I’ve known her awhile, and she remembered that it was years before I dared to take a photo of Maria’s face, she was like a deer, startled by a light.

Maria is the reason I began taking pictures, every one of the was and still is a message to her, a way of talking when we didn’t know how to talk. A way of encouraging me to take pictures when no one else in my life did.

She told me of her reasons to be afraid of photographs, and I treaded very lightly, but I never stopped wanting to have her portrait hanging on my wall.

I started photographing her at a distance, then the back of her head, then closer and to the side, and finally, after five years, her face. As she came to trust me, she permitted me to take her portrait. It was a big turning point for us. She can only do it once in awhile. And no posing.

Carolyn was laughing about it.

I think this portrait captures both her vulnerability and her great strength, and every time I look up at it, I am filled with love and admiration. I’m so grateful to Carolyn and Sandy for making such a beautiful portrait of Maria for me, I will look up at it every day of my life that I am home, and smile at coming to see that miracles can happen in our lives.

I thought I was heading for the end of a loveless life, I never imagine my life would be filled with love.