This morning my husband and I went to a service at a church built in 1849, wood framed and white steepled. Grey headstones with white lichen chill as hoarfrost rise in a tidy graveyard in the back. Inside, the old pews are tiny, built when the average man was 5’6”. Sitting is precarious. I feel like a large spoon in a small tea cup about to tip out.

An altar girl whisks past us with a candle; “Slow down,” my husband whispers. “Your candle is going to go out.” He speaks from ancient altar boy experience. A couple our age sits in a pew near the front. The wife has bedecked herself for autumn, a wool tartan skirt and orange turtle neck, a wool cap. I have realized too late, after a large investment, that the models wearing turtlenecks in the LL Bean catalogues are weedy ballerinas with long ballerina necks…