On the sweetness of Mormon life.

Because your wife is the Stake Primary President and has to spend most Sundays out visiting other wards; because the two of you have a little baby; because she took your oldest daughter with her to help with the baby; because of all that, it is early Sunday afternoon, your middle daughters and little son are eating the sandwiches you made for them, and you are enjoying lassitude in the winter sun streaming through the windows.

One of your daughters finishes and comes to sit by you.

“Do you know what I love?” you ask. “No.” “Sun on a winter Sunday.” “Me too.” “Do you know what else I love?” “What?” “I love you.” “Me too.”

Then you have one of those conversations. The very puritan and proper kind. “I love you more.” “Well, I love you morest.” “I love you most morest.” “I love you mostest morest.” The other daughter intervenes: “I love you to infinity and beyond times a galaxy far, far away.”

That takes the cake, you think. Maximum silliness has been reached.

But you are wrong. Your little son runs in holding a toy chopper. “I love you on helicopter days!” he announces. Then he runs back out.

You and your daughters are left behind in stunned silence, much like Calvin’s classroom after a visit from Stupendous Man.

At night you all go to dinner at your mom’s. It’s being held to cheer up your brother, who is sick and in decline, and has been for months. You tell him about the love conversation. A smile ghosts across his lips. It blossoms into a grin.