Yesterday I went to the farmer’s market, my mouth watering for the heirloom tomatoes sold by my favorite vendor. I bought two last week and they are the tastiest tomatoes that I’ve had that I haven’t grown myself. She had just three left and I bought them all. I had the first on a salad of spicy lettuce for my lunch and it was just as good as I had hoped it would be.
This morning I spent my extra hour in the garden, talking to our winter tomato plants that are just beginning to blossom. They are thriving in this not-winter weather and I expect to have fruit soon. I suppose we’ve gone a bit overboard, as we always seem to do, and I am looking forward to having the problem of too many tomatoes.
This afternoon I went to an intensive yoga workshop, “on the ropes.” I hung upside down and did forward bends and backbends while suspended in loops of heavy rope hanging from the walls in my teacher’s studio. While I suspect that I will be moving a bit slowly tomorrow as a result of my time hanging around this afternoon, it is such a delicious feeling to stretch and bend and twist and breathe into my body. To push it harder than I think it can go. As I walked home from the workshop I marveled that this is the thing that is middle age. To have the freedom and the flexibility to choose to exercise for an afternoon just because it’s what I want to do.
And then afterwards I puttered around the house doing laundry and cooking dinner and watching a bit of Netflix. A pair of missionaries knocked on my door as I was puttering. When I answered the bell they greeted me by name, saying that they’d just received my contact information and that they were excited to meet me.
I was still wearing my yoga clothes, my bare shoulders revealing more than my tan lines. I knew I couldn’t invite them inside, because I am an adult woman at home alone and that would not be appropriate. They smiled and they told me they were from Utah and Texas and asked if they could come again soon. I was tempted to tell them to google me when they got home, but instead I thanked them for their kindness and explained that I would not be interested in future visits.
I looked in their eyes and saw my brothers and so many other young mormons I have loved. I wondered which one of them had shared my address with the Church and wondered if they knew how sad I was to have my location known to the local congregation.
They asked how long I had been a member and I told them it has been for all of my life.
In that moment I remembered being wrapped in white linen, when holy oil was swabbed on my forehead and scalp and clavicles and spine, when I sat on a throne and was anointed to become both a priestess and a queen. The details are still vivid, despite it being an eternity ago.
I wished the missionaries goodnight and turned off the porch light after they exited the front gate.
