Maggie and Karen and I divided up Mom’s jewelry yesterday. It sounds creepier than it was. We all sat on the bed with a big pile of plastic bags of labelled jewelry and Mom lay on the bed next to us, telling us stories of what everything was and where it came from, and we systematically picked the things we liked or cared about. I wound up with all the crosses, no surprise, so I can now wear entirely misleading religious jewelry to my heart’s content. I hung up one of the crosses — a stained glass one that my grandmother made — on my wall and maybe I’ll paint my bedroom to match it. It’s made of circles of color, the vertical leg starting at yellow at the top and descending through shades of red and the horizontal bar in shades of light blue. If I knew where a working camera was, I’d post a picture.

Later, Henry and Maddie and Caroline and Zelda played in the pool. I wished for a video camera then, a way to capture the ages — the bickering, the playing, the splashing, the way they explored the edges and tried out the jacuzzi/hot tub/cold tub. Maddie is still too small to have her feet touch the ground, but she’s a very capable swimmer. She spent the most time in the tub, probably because in there she could play without the work of keeping herself afloat. She also spent the most time throwing the ball for Zelda. And she liked jumping in the pool, in dozens of different jump styles. The banana — spread your legs wide and make a split. The macaroni — flop in like a noodle. I suspect she and Henry would have found a style for any random noun — or maybe even verb — that Maggie or I gave them.