A very long time ago, when my tall fortysomething adult child was small and my husband was in his weird prime, we used to attend church every week.

My husband had been raised an Episcopalian by his Scottish-American parents, and sang in a boys choir until his voice changed. He was very attached to a particular kind of Episcopal service that is known as “high church.” Otherwise known affectionately as “smells and bells,” it involves copious amounts of incense swung by a thurifer in a thurible; the celebrant and the congregation chant much of the rite while standing, sitting, and kneeling in a predetermined order; there is usually a proper organ with big pipes, a choir with equally impressive pipes, a leaflet with the order of the service, a book in which the possible orders of service and readings appear, several hymns, and the ritual cannibalism of a proper Christian Communion.

It’s all terribly respectable and well-behaved, partly because the congregation is concentrating very hard on crossing themselves, genuflecting, uttering responses, and knowing what to do when the offering plate comes around, partly because it tells itself that it shelters the remnants of the American upper class.

Good behavior is a big thing in the Episcopal Church, and why members are sometimes called the “frozen chosen.” “High church” isn’t necessarily conservative in the political sense, though, just in the ritual sense.

I preferred something a bit more “low church” back then, having been raised quasi-Quaker. When my husband and child were off at high church, I often went to the church near my house, where the vicar was a gay man who lived in the vicarage next door with his partner, because the implacable Irish-American-Anglican members of that dying place did not want a woman or a black man as their priest and had to make do with what they could get. I liked the priest a lot; he was a genuinely nice man and a progressive, and I went back because of him.

Meanwhile, my husband and child would toddle off to St. Mark’s in Center City Philadelphia, where the service was high as hell and the vaulted roof was adorned by glowing stained glass windows. I don’t know that my husband was particularly religious in the sense non-Christians understand. It’s hard to explain, except perhaps to say that when he was dying, he got the priest to come around and see him and then refused Communion when it was offered. Good form mattered intensely to him, and ritual, and the acceptance of the Church that humans are sinful, but Communion not so much.

He made himself a stalwart of St. Mark’s for a long while. He set up their audio system, joined a discussion group working through “A Course in Miracles,” and knew everyone’s business. He gossiped knowledgeably about the peccadilloes of the priests and the politics of the vestry. Our child joined him (and me, when he could persuade me to come with him) and also went to Sunday school some of the time. My kid remembers the marvelous drawings I used to make on the leaflets to entertain them and myself, because I was often bored.

There was a part of my husband that adored a man in a spectacular vestment, arms raised, intoning, “The Lord be with you,” and so his life was complete if he could be present for the whole shebang of a service. The Confession was particularly dear to him, and the superseded 1929 Prayer Book; he didn’t much like modern nonsense. He was a profoundly snobbish man, even though he had grown up short of money in a gritty city, even though when our kid was young we were living in a grim little row house in a terrible neighborhood on very little income.

I did not set out to write about my husband today, though. I sat down to write about visiting the church yesterday. I went because I was sick of the meeting I generally attend on Sunday mornings, and also probably because I am old. Churches are full of young families and old people, often for similar reasons.

I had a lovely time yesterday. It’s Lent, so the crosses were covered in translucent gray cloth like predictable birthday presents. The apse was glowing, with the beautiful Crucifixion over the front of it, and the stained glass windows on the upper level shone with the sunlight. The place absolutely reeked of resinous incense, and when the organist had finished playing the voluntary and the procession began, more incense billowed up in fragrant clouds from the thurible being swung grandly by a well-trained parishioner in an alb.

The rector is new, another gay man who lives with his partner in the rectory, the interim associate rector is a woman, and they carried off the glittering vestments with panache; there were altar girls and boys, and all the company of heaven, marching happily up the aisle while we all found our place in the hymnal and sang #449.

The service went on for nearly two hours, and was exactly what I hoped.

Afterwards, I tried to make my escape out the front doors (everyone else was going out the side to chat in the garden and go to the coffee hour in the parish house). The new priest was standing there by the door, though, slightly in the shadow, as if he hoped to remain unnoticed.

I paused, not wanting to disturb him, and then said lamely, “I used to come when Charles Moore was here,” and he smiled. “Lovely service,” I said, and let us both escape.

I surfaced into the March sunlight, blinking, and went to get ginger bok choy dumplings in broth for lunch, planning to come back next week. Charles Moore was rector forty-five years ago. I didn’t recognize anyone in the church. If anyone in that well-bred congregation tries to condescend to me, I will be courteous. I will be kind. I will not mention that I was a member forty-five years ago. I will just go and listen to the glorious music and wear an N95 mask so I don’t have to run out coughing when the thurifer goes by, and then I will slip out the front while everyone else is chatting. At least that’s the plan.