Ad copy

My daughter-in-law put me on the shaded reading deck for every shore day of the Mediterranean cruise. She wrote it in a spreadsheet. She didn't know I was already packed. My son David and his wife Lauren had been planning the Aegean cruise for fourteen months. Eight days. Athens to Crete via Mykonos and Santorini. Twelve of us — David and Lauren, Lauren's parents, her sister Holly and brother-in-law Brent, the kids, and me. Lauren built the spreadsheet in April. Color-coded by family member. Each port mapped with shore excursion timing, transport, lunch reservations, optional walking tours. I had assumed I was on the same line as everyone else. I was not. She emailed the spreadsheet to all twelve of us on a Tuesday morning. I opened it on my laptop at the kitchen island. At the bottom of the spreadsheet was a tab called Mom — Modified Schedule for Heat & Foot Considerations. I read it twice. Mykonos: shaded reading deck on the ship with light lunch, meet group for sunset dinner. Heraklion: the spa morning, the late afternoon visit to the small museum only. Santorini: shaded reading deck on the ship. Mom — please rest. The summer heat plus your foot swelling means the walking and the cliffside steps will not be enjoyable. She had written Mom — please rest three times. I sat with the spreadsheet open at my kitchen island for the rest of the afternoon. I had been to Greece in 1996 with Robert. I had walked the donkey path up from the old port at Fira to the top of Santorini in the August heat in a pair of leather sandals that had cut into both of my heels by mile two. We had laughed about it for a week afterward. I had been thinking about going back since the year Robert died. I had been thinking about how to do it differently the second time. Lauren had decided for me. The spreadsheet had decided. I closed the laptop. I called my sister Helen that night. Helen is sixty. The Camino walker. The one who has been in every Sarah story I let myself tell. I told her about the spreadsheet. The shaded reading deck. The three Mom — please rest notes. She was quiet for a beat. Then: "Sarah. What are you wearing on your feet in Mykonos." "What." "Mykonos in August. What sandals. Tell me you are not wearing the leather pair from 1996." I had been wearing the same leather sandals every summer for thirty years. They had not fit by the afternoon since 2018. I had been telling myself I would replace them. I had not replaced them. She said: "Sarah. Listen to me. The walking in Mykonos and Santorini is not the problem. The walking is the reason you wanted to go back. The shoes are the problem. The leather pair from 1996 has been the problem for seven years. It is why Lauren wrote Mom — please rest three times." I waited. She said: "There is a sandal I have been wearing for two summers. Stretchy elastic strap across the top. A slingback that wraps the back of the heel so the sandal does not fly off. Wide front. The straps stretch as your feet swell in the heat — they do not dig in by mile three. The sole is a cushioned tan-caramel material that handles cobblestones and stone steps and hot pavement. I walked Madrid in August in them for ten days. My feet did not ask me anything." She sent me the link. "It's called Nimbao Free Stride. They release in small drops. The sky blue is what I would bring for the Aegean. The beige is for the dinners. The wild leopard is for the photographs." She added: "And they had something running where you grab two pairs and the second one's free. The sky blue is almost out for the summer batch." I ordered the sky blue and the beige. I added the wild leopard as a third pair because the photograph of Robert and me on the donkey path in Santorini in 1996 had been him in a navy linen shirt and me in a wild leopard print scarf I had bought at the market in Fira. The boxes arrived on Thursday. I opened them at the kitchen island. The sandals were lighter than the leather pair. The straps had a small visible stretch when I pressed them with my thumb. The slingback was elastic — not a buckle. I put on the sky blue barefoot. I walked the length of the kitchen and back. I walked through the dining room and into the front hall and out the front door and down the porch steps and back up. The straps did not cut into the bridge of my foot. The slingback did not slip. The toe box was wide enough that my left foot — the one that had been getting wider for eight years — had room. I packed for Greece. One bag. Three pairs of sandals. The notebook from Italy 1998. The small enamel pin Robert had worn at the embassy in Brussels in 1991. The wild leopard scarf from the market in Fira in 1996. I put the leather sandals from 1996 in a small canvas tote. I brought them with me. I had decided I would leave them in Greece. The flight to Athens was overnight. I landed at noon on the Wednesday before the cruise. Lauren and David and the family arrived from Munich an hour later. Their flight had been delayed. Their luggage had not all made the connection. I was at the small café in the arrivals hall reading when Lauren came past with her group, trying to figure out where the missing bags had gone. She did not see me. I went to the inn near the port. I unpacked. I walked the Plaka for four hours in the sky blue Free Strides. The temperature was thirty-three Celsius. My feet did not swell into the straps. The stretchy band gave when my foot expanded. The slingback held. The cruise boarded Friday. Mykonos was Sunday. Lauren had me down for shaded reading deck. I walked off the ship at the port at eight in the morning. I had the sky blue Free Strides on and the wild leopard pair in my bag. I walked the eight blocks from the port into the old town. I walked the windmills at noon. I had lunch at a place on the harbor I had read about in a magazine on the plane. By four in the afternoon I had walked twelve thousand steps in the August heat. The straps had given. The slingback had held. The cushioned tan sole had absorbed the heat from the white-painted stone steps. My feet did not ask me anything. I came back to the ship at five. Lauren was at the pool deck with her sister. She looked up. "Mom." "Lauren." She stood up. "You went into town." "I did." "How was the spa." "I didn't go to the spa." She blinked. Then she looked at my feet. "Mom. Are those — what are those sandals." I told her. The next morning at breakfast, the food writer for Saveur — the same one who had been at the table next to mine on a different cruise three years ago — recognized me from the bridge deck. She came over with her coffee. She said: "Sarah. The Nimbao Sandals. I have been telling my editor about them for two months. I have been wearing them in Crete since June." I asked her how she had recognized me. She said: "Your shoes were the only ones I had been planning to write about this season. I saw them yesterday at the Plaka café when you came past. I followed you for two blocks. I wanted to be sure." She laughed. She had been in Crete on assignment for a piece on the small ports. I had been booked for shaded reading deck. The food writer asked me where I had gone in Mykonos. I told her. She wrote down the names of the three places I had eaten at. Day five. Santorini. The donkey path from Fira down to the old port is five hundred and eighty-eight stone steps. The afternoon heat in August is forty Celsius on the exposed part of the path. Lauren had me down for shaded reading deck. I walked off the tender at the old port at nine in the morning. I had the wild leopard pair on. The bag on my shoulder had a water bottle and the small enamel pin Robert had worn in Brussels. I started up the steps at nine fifteen. I walked the entire five hundred and eighty-eight steps to the top. I stopped twice. The view of the caldera from the third bend is one of the views in the world. I sat on the wall and drank water. The wild leopard sandals were the same pair I had imagined wearing back to this spot since I had stood here with Robert in 1996. I made it to Fira at ten fifteen. I had coffee at the same café Robert and I had eaten at. The owner — eighties, the same owner — recognized the leopard print on my feet. He said: "Madame. The scarf." He remembered the scarf I had bought from his cousin at the market in 1996. I ordered a Greek coffee. I sat for an hour. Then I walked Fira for the afternoon. At four I sat on a bench above the caldera and watched the cruise ships move out toward Mykonos in the harbor below. Lauren found me at five forty-five. She had taken the cable car up. She had been looking for me for an hour. She sat down next to me on the bench. She did not say anything for a long moment. Then she said: "Mom. About the spreadsheet." "Lauren." "I — Mom. I want to ask you something. The sandals. What are they." I told her again. Nimbao Free Stride. The sky blue. The wild leopard. The beige. She wrote it down on her phone. She said: "Mom. I had you down for shaded reading deck because I thought your feet would not hold. I had not asked you. I had not asked Helen. I had not asked anyone. I had decided." I let her sit with it. I said: "Lauren. I want to ask you something. Have you been to Santorini before." "No. This is my first time." "This is my second. Robert and I were here in August 1996. I have been planning to come back since 2018. I was going to walk this path the way I walked it with him, on my own, in shoes that did not cut my heels by mile two." She looked at her feet. She was wearing leather slip-ons that had cut a small red mark on her left arch. She said: "Mom. I'm sorry." "Lauren. I am not asking for an apology. I am asking you to ask the question before you write the spreadsheet next time." She nodded. We watched the sun go down together. On the last night of the cruise, the cruise director — a Greek man named Petros, sixty, who had been working this circuit for eighteen years — was at the door of the captain's dinner welcoming guests. He saw me. He said: "Mrs. Sarah. The sandals. Are they Nimbao." I asked him how he had known. He said: "My wife. She has been telling me about them for a month. She saw the food writer's piece on the Saveur social yesterday. She has been writing me from Crete every two hours." I told him about the sky blue. He wrote it on the back of a napkin. He folded the napkin into his vest pocket. The flight home was Sunday. In the airport in Athens, I left the leather sandals from 1996 in a small canvas tote on the bench at gate B6. I taped a small note to the tote. It said: These were comfortable in 1996. They have not been comfortable since 2018. If they fit you and you can use them, please take them. — Sarah I do not know if anyone took them. I do not have them anymore. Here's what I learned. For seven years I had been wearing a pair of leather sandals from 1996 because I had loved them when Robert had been with me. I had been waiting for a moment to retire them. The moment had come on a flight to Greece I had not been supposed to take, in shoes that finally fit a foot that had been changing for a decade. Lauren wrote the spreadsheet because she had been looking at my old sandals and at the August heat and at the cobblestones of Mykonos and the steps of Santorini and she had decided I was not going to manage. She had decided based on the leather sandals I had been refusing to retire. The new sandals did not change the heat. The new sandals let my left foot — the one that had been getting wider for eight years — have somewhere to go in the August heat without the strap cutting. If your daughter-in-law has put you on shaded reading deck for every shore day of a Mediterranean cruise — If she has done it kindly because she has been looking at the sandals you have been wearing since 1996 — If you have been refusing to retire those sandals because they were comfortable in a year that is not coming back — Look at the sandal before you accept the modified schedule. Not because it solves everything. The donkey path is still five hundred and eighty-eight steps. The August heat is still forty Celsius at the third bend. Lauren is still going to want to write spreadsheets. But because the moment you walk past the cable car and start up the path in a pair of wild leopard Free Strides — that's the moment your daughter-in-law has to come find you on the bench above the caldera at five forty-five. Helen has the sky blue and the beige. Petros's wife in Crete has the sky blue. The food writer from Saveur has the wild leopard for her next assignment. Lauren ordered the beige and the wild leopard the night after Santorini. A few colors were already low when I checked back this week. I'd move sooner rather than later if there's one you want. The leather sandals from 1996 are at gate B6 of the Athens airport — or wherever the person who took them has carried them since. I am wearing the wild leopard pair home. Your move.