Today, this pin speaks to me of vulnerability — opening of the hands for help, opening of the hands to our own weaknesses, opening of the hands to silence, opening of the heart.

Traffic, Christmas shopping, a bustling Burlington Mall, Route 128, a quick Costco run — not exactly the stuff of quietude. Nevertheless, an underground sense of quiet faintly persisted — always a signal, to me, that we are close to the darkest day of the year.

An early phone call with a friend delivers this fruit — a definition she had heard a few days earlier — “… forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having had a different past.”