Happy December birthday, Caroline, and thank you for this lovely newsletter.

For some reason, your association of your season of birth and your time struck me as unique though I'm sure many do it. But I don't. I am a child of December, late December, but I've associated myself with fall for as long as I can remember, with that time of year "when yellow leaves, or few, or none do hang/ upon those boughs, rough shaken by the cold"--though that could describe winter, too, I suppose.

But here's to softness and grief. Happy solstice to you and all best.