EVENSONG

This is not an account of a love affair, and it is not the story of a religious conversion, although elements of both pertain. Of course, in life, which is full of surprises, it is hard to know what anything is.

- LAURIE COLWIN

My husband, John Felix, and I live, with our ten-year-old daughter, Alice, on the bottom two floors of a brownstone, in the neighbourhood of an Anglican seminary, a collection of Gothic buildings and a lawn. In the spring, it is possible to watch priests and their families playing croquet on the grass. In summer, vaporous smoke from their tiny barbecues wafts through our front windows. If you were a complete psycho and could not tell one thing from another, the orderly workings of this place—its piper on St. Andrew’s Day, its Christmas procession and Easter picnic—would remind you that the season had changed, and you would know, because the hours are marked by bell ringing, what time it was at least five times a day. Even those who pay absolutely no attention to the institution are affected by it, if for no other reason than because on clear nights you can hear the organist practicing in the chapel.