On the sweetness of Mormon life.

You put your knife down on the cutting table, laying it across the cucumber slices. The doorbell just rang. Unusual. Everybody normally just walks right in. “Come in,” you yell again. No one does. You wipe off your hands from the salad you are making for this month’s extended family birthday dinner.  You walk to the door.

It is your mother’s young visiting teacher. She has a carton of eggs. “For your mom,” she says. (You are at your parents’ house).   Behind her in the drive, still yellow from the shredded peachwood your dad spread over it, you see her husband and her children in a Polaris 4x Ranger. It is open to the fresh spring air, being something like a four-wheeler grown up into a jeep. Your mother comes to the door, you head out to the driveway.

The husband explains that the eggs came from the 50 hens they are watching for one of your ward’s grand old men, who is having heart trouble. They are taking cartons around to visiting teaching and home teaching families. His kids, and now yours, are clambering on the vehicle. You tease his a little. “What route you taking?” you ask him. He tells you the ditchbanks. You nod. It’s what you figured. The ditchbank roads go almost everywhere down here, with only short ventures onto country blacktops.

Your dad pulls in. He is getting back from church business at the Spanish ward in town. As he walks up, he takes his tie off and smiles.