We sit around the small fire, burning Nana’s and Papa’s old documents. Nana hated — hated — clutter of every kind, but she was something of a hoarder in one sense: she kept all receipts and bills, neatly organized, filed away discretely. Had the IRS ever audited one of their returns, the auditor would have faced a mountain of evidence through which to sort. So as Papa downsizes, we have to get rid of stuff. And truth be told, there is no reason to keep tax returns and receipts from, say, 2006.

The Boy is eager to start the fire. He’s as fascinated with fire as anyone, I suppose, and the act of setting something ablaze, of doing something so otherwise forbidden, makes him almost literally shake with excitement. Once the fire gets going, we pile on some bigger pieces of wood. Tonight, we’re burning the remains of our broken swing as we talk about getting a new swing to replace it, all the time wadding paper and tossing it onto the fire.

Occasionally, a bit of glowing paper lifts out of the fire pit and wanders around indecisively in the hot up-drafts from the flames. The Boy stands on guard, ready to hunt down and stomp out any glowing bits of almost-flaming paper. Truth be told, it rained so much last week and the week before, and it’s been so relatively cool that I doubt there’s much of a hazard at all, but the Boy enjoys the responsibility.

After the last of the fire dies down, Papa and I watch a movie as K gets the Boy in bed. Conspiracy is one of those movies that sounds like it shouldn’t be as moving as it is: it’s literally set for 95% of the film in a single room, with about sixteen men sitting around a table talking. But it’s what they’re discussing that makes the film so moving and horrific: it’s the Wannsee conference during which Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann disclose and explain to those present the plan for the use of gas chambers to eradicate the Jews from Europe and eventually the planet. Kenneth Branagh plays Heydrich, and as always, he’s absolutely brilliant. He manages simultaneously to smile and seeth at the same moment.