There were our parents, impossibly young, before us, on a beach somewhere with their whole lives ahead of them and no idea what those lives would ask.

We found the ones from the treehouse, the sprinkler, the science fair, the box’s whole inventory alive again in Kodak color.

We divided them the only fair way, which was slowly, one at a time, you take that one, I’ve got the negative, we’ll both get copies made, and every so often one of us would go quiet over a picture and the other would wait, and we didn’t have to explain, because there was finally, again, someone in the room who knew without being told.

That was the thing I had missed most and understood least, in the nine years — the not having to explain.