If you were here tonight, I'd tell you about how I went to the Mormon chapel today. We'd sit on the bed, I think, because there are a few days of clutter everywhere else and it's cozy up here. We could watch everything like lords of it all. Lords of the grocery bags and discarded jackets.

I found the chapel with the little map that the elders gave me some months ago—I think I mentioned it. On the way there I asked a woman about the correct train stop to get off at, and later a man about a park where I could eat my bakery-bought lunch. I understood half the words. That was enough though. I got off at the correct and tiny station in a depressing area of Atsugi where there was a factory smell and a lot of concrete and wires and cars. I found a garbage-strewn set of benches and a little shrine by the river and ate my lunch there.

I was anxious but not freaking out when I passed the chapel the first time. It sort of pops out at you with sudden white largeness. A spiral staircase, half of the first floor given over to parking, a couple of people walking out. I walked past them and past the Create drugstore across the street. (This is when I found the park and ate my curry roll, my tiny pizza, and my doughnut.)

I felt light and fizzy when I walked back and in. I lingered in the empty little front room and looked at a display of different language editions of the Book of Mormon. '80s era posters in English. Ads for the English classes the elders teach.

Up the stairs. They were narrowish, just enough room for a person going one way to pass a person going the other way. At the top, a Japanese woman saw me and said "Hello" in English. I tried to ask for the meeting schedule in Japanese, and she asked what meeting, and I had no idea how to say "sacrament meeting" and she didn't switch to English, so "Hello" was probably the extent of her abilities in that regard. She said there was a meeting going on then and held open a door right there in the narrow hallway and ushered me in.

This was at two thirty or three, by the way. "Baptism," I said to myself when I saw a little Latin American kid at the front and his family up there too and not exactly a full house in the rest of the folding chairs. Bingo. I sat down right by the door I'd come in and listened to the little guy thank everyone for coming. Someone in the column of chairs next to me went up to the front and told the elders I was there and they came back by me, smiling huge. I bet I made their day.

Are you from England? I'm guessing you're a member. How long have you been here?

American, actually, from California. Yeah, haven't come for a long time though. About nine months.

He gave me the schedule for the meetings. The bishop spoke a little. We sang "I Am A Child Of God" in Japanese and it felt warm in my head and then a prayer, a few more pleasantries, and I left.

"See you next week" he said, and maybe he will, I dunno. It felt good to sit there. It was familiar and comforting and I didn't feel suffocated. It was interesting to see how much I could understand. It was a baptism, though, and I arrived close to the end. Two of the three people I heard speak were adorable and Latin and simple and children. There was a lot of space. There was no sacrament ritual.

If you were here, I don't know if you'd ask why I'm going or not, but I ask myself. Answer: Mormonism is part of my heritage. I don't really want to cut it out of my life. Pain aside.

I imagine you'd raise an eyebrow if you were here, but maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Now I need to turn on the heat and wash the spoon I ate mango yogurt with earlier and brush my teeth and sleep. School starts again in a couple of days. I'd get up and we'd hug, if you were here.