Whatever happened to Jesus’ foreskin? The Apocryphal Gospels reveal that shortly after his birth, Jesus’ mother gave it to an old Hebrew woman who had the prescience to preserve it in a jar of nard.

Your newborn son lies fighting for his life, the sickest baby in the NICU at NYU Medical Center. Your mother dies. Your father is diagnosed with prostate cancer. Your older son is seriously mauled by the family dog. Your marriage begins to unravel. Your tight financial situation weighs heavily on your mind. All of this happens in one horrific year.

Most people born before the 1980s will remember letters. Hand- or typewritten, letters exist in time and in space in a way that text messages, IMs, and emails do not.

Zoe Weil is the author of several books on humane education, including Above All, Be Kind, a book for parents, and Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs, a book for children age 9 and up, which will be available this month online at lanternbooks.com.