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I get my grandson one week a year. I have 1 left. He is 9. This summer he got out of my pool and said, "Not while you are in it." Everybody said it was his age. Owen gets the first week of July at my house, on his own, since he was 5. We call it Grandma Camp. His mother drops him off Sunday, then she goes. That is the whole rule. Parents don't stay. There are 3 of them. Owen, then Ruby, then Nate. They each get their own week. Nicole lives 20 minutes away. It is not that I never see him. Last July he was in my pool by 9 every morning. Every time he climbed out he came to me for his towel. I start on the week in June. Special never just happens. Camp is mine. Bill was at work for every one of them. He retired in March, so this year he was out there too. I had the pool out on the Friday before. The little blue one, with the hose run to it from the spigot. The sprinkler out too, the green one that goes back and forth. His backpack on the bed in the spare room, with a flashlight, a whistle, and the sour candy his mother says no to. The sign on the porch said Dinosaur Camp. Every year gets a name, and this year that is what he is. I had the week written out on a card. Monday the sprinkler. Tuesday the library. Wednesday the fort. Thursday the lake. I know how that sounds. But I have watched people wing a week with a kid, so by Wednesday it is television. Nicole pulled in at 10 on the Sunday. She had him out of the car before she had the engine off. She kissed the top of his head and he put both arms around her neck, the way he does. Then she left, because that is the rule. He found the candy in 40 seconds. By 11 he was in the water. It was 90 out. I got the little steps, set them at the side of the pool, and sat down on the bottom one with my feet in. Owen was on the far side with a plastic dinosaur, doing the thing where the dinosaur talks. I slid the rest of the way in. That pool comes up past my knees if I am sitting down in it. He stopped doing the voice. He stood up and said he wanted a popsicle. I said we had just got in. I said get one after. He said, "I want to get out." He went over the side, up onto the porch, and sat down on the step with his back against the post. I said come back in, it is 90 degrees, I am not going to splash you. He said, "Not while you are in it." He did not shout it. He said it the way you say you do not want peas, and then he ate his popsicle. 10 minutes later Bill came out in his shorts, no shirt, 68 years old, and got in. Owen was in that water before Bill had both feet in it. I was still sitting on the bottom step. He is 9. He has said worse than that about broccoli. That is what I told myself, and I went in and made his dinner. That is what I keep coming back to. Every single thing that boy did that week had a reason sitting right there next to it. Monday I ran the sprinkler for him. He went through it 20 times, screaming every time, the way he has since he was 3. I stood at the edge of the grass with his towel over my arm. He ran past me to the porch and pulled the other one off the rail himself. There were 2 towels on that rail. He took the one that was not in my hand. I said I had his right here. He said, "I want Grandpa to do it." Bill was 20 feet away with a coffee, and he had not done one thing. Tuesday at the library he took his stack to the table by the window. That is the table I have sat at with him since he was 4. Then he took the stack back off it and sat down on the floor in the aisle. I stood there with my car keys in my hand, working out whether a person is allowed to be hurt by that. In the car on the way home he sat behind Bill. That night I read to him. Bedtime is the best part of the whole week for me. It always has been. I have sat on the edge of that bed and read to that boy 2 chapters a night for 3 summers. That is where I first heard about the mosasaur. I picked the book up off the nightstand and sat down. He said, "I want Grandpa to do it." I said Grandpa does not do the voices. He said, "I don't want you to do it." I sat there on the edge of that bed with the book open on my knee. So Bill read it. I stood in the hallway with my hand flat on the wall and listened to my husband of 41 years get the voices wrong. That boy laughed at them anyway. Then I went and did the dishes, which were already done. He wanted me and no one else, once. When he was 2 he would put both arms straight up in the air at me across a room full of people. You do not get that back. Everybody knows you do not get that back. That is not what this is about. Wednesday we built the fort over the clothesline, the way my mother did it. He asked Bill to hold the corner. I was standing right there with a clothespin in my hand. Bill held the corner. I gave Bill the clothespin. I brought them out lemonade, but I did not go in, because it is a fort, and grandmothers do not go in the fort. That is what I told myself while I was standing outside of it. Wednesday afternoon is the one I keep. Owen came out of the water and stood on the grass, dripping, with his arms out from his sides the way they do. I had his towel. I had taken it off the rail 2 minutes before. I was holding it open with both hands, about 4 feet from him. That is what I have done every July since that child was 5 years old. He looked at me holding it. Then he walked past me to his grandfather. Bill did not even have a towel. Bill had a garden hose. Bill said, "Hang on, bud," put the hose down in the grass, and pulled the other towel off the rail. And Owen stood there and let him. He let a 68 year old man in wet shorts wrap him up in a towel while his grandmother stood 4 feet away holding one open. And while Bill was doing it, Owen took a step backward. Away from me. To get the room. He was not upset. He was talking the entire time about a reptile. Bill did not notice one thing. Bill said, "You are going to be a prune." I stood there holding that towel open until it got ridiculous. Then I folded it over my arm. There is no version of that I can explain with his age. Bill is 2 years older than I am. He was 4 feet away with a garden hose in his hand, and that child walked into his arms. I went in and put the towel in the dryer. It did not need it. It was dry. Then I stood in the laundry room with my hand flat on top of that dryer and hated my husband for about 4 minutes. 41 years, and I had never done that once. Bill was at work for 5 summers of that boy's life. He has never planned a week. He has never bought a whistle. He held a corner. And that child would climb over me to get to him. I did not cry in front of him. I cried that night with the shower running so nobody would hear it. I am 66 years old and I sat down on the floor of my own shower. I have not done that since the day my mother died. Then I lay in bed with my phone and typed in 9 year old pulling away from grandmother. Which is not a thing I am proud of. It is a phase. It is developmentally normal. They need room for friends their own age. Every one of those pages would have been right, if Bill had not been standing in the same yard. Because he is not doing it to Bill. He is not doing it to his mother either. He got out of the car on Sunday and put both arms around her neck. I lay there at 1 in the morning working out what Bill has that I do not, and I could not find one thing. If it is his age, then it is his age with everybody. That is what age is. Thursday morning I was in the shower at 5, before anybody in the house was up. I put a clean shirt on so he would not get the one I slept in. There is a cardigan that lives on the hook by the back door. I took it down and held the collar of it up to my face in the hallway, with the house asleep. It smelled like a cardigan. I put it back on the hook. It took me until Thursday to say the true thing in my own head. I was not afraid he had gone off me. I was afraid he was being polite to me. A 9 year old. Being polite to his grandmother. In her own back yard. For a week. Because his mother raised him right. Thursday was the lake, which was the big thing I had planned. I did the whole cooler the night before. Bologna sandwiches cut in triangles, crusts off. He asked for them that way when he was 6 and has never once asked since. I have made them that way for 3 years anyway. He had a good day. I am not going to pretend he did not. He had a really good day. I waded in to my knees and stood there. He came past me 6 or 7 times going after those frogs. Right past my legs. He did not once stop where I was standing. He did bring me a frog. He came up out of that water with it in both hands and held it up in front of me at arm's length. Then he took it back before I could get a finger on it. He wanted me to see the frog. He did not want to be standing there while I saw it. That is the thing nobody warns you about. It does not look like anything. Nothing happens that you could tell another person about without sounding like you have lost your mind. That night I put out the treat plate. A biscuit, a marshmallow, strawberries and grapes, and the Nutella in the middle. That plate is the whole reason he thinks I am worth coming to. I know it, but I do not care. I brought it out on the porch, but he did not look up. I put my hand on the top of his head, the way you do. He said, "You are annoying me." Then he ate 2 marshmallows and asked if we could do the sprinkler again tomorrow. He did not mean it the way it landed. I know that. He is 9. But something happens to you after enough of them. I did not read to him that night. I told him Grandpa does it better, which he took as a fact, because it is one. By Friday I had stopped. I did not get in the water when he was in it. I sat in the chair at the edge with the cooler and the towels. That is a job. It looks like a job. Nobody asks a woman with a cooler why she is sitting where she is sitting. Every time he climbed out I got up and went to get something. Ice. A different popsicle. The bug spray off the windowsill. So that it looked like I was the one leaving. When I hugged him I did it fast and I let go first. I have never in my life let go of that child first. I am 66 years old, and I was running a distance in my own back yard like a seating chart. Nicole called Friday around lunch to see how it was going. I told her it was going great. I told her about the frogs. She said, "He is having the best week." I said he was. That was true. He was. I sat there on the phone with her doing arithmetic. He is 9. The camp runs until they are 10. After that they have friends and travel ball and they would rather be anywhere in the world than at my house. 1 more. I had the number before she finished the sentence. 1 more week with that boy, and I had spent this one moving my chair. Friday afternoon I told Bill I had to run out for hamburger buns for the cookout. I sat in my car in the lot at the grocery store for 25 minutes without going in. I did not know what I had done. I went back over that whole week looking for the thing I had done, and there is no thing. My grandson would rather I was not out there at all. He is 9 years old and he would rather I stayed in the house. So I called Marlene from that parking lot, which I would not have done on any other day of my life. Marlene is 71. She was a nurse for 30 years in an assisted living building on the north side. She has been my friend since our girls were in the same 3rd grade class, which is 38 years now. She is the only person I know who does not soften a thing. I told her all of it right there in the lot. The pool. The book. The floor of the library. The towel. I told her I had been getting up out of my own chair to fetch things, so that his leaving would look like my going. I heard myself say that out loud, so I had to stop for a second. She let me finish. Then she said, "I am coming over." She came at 5 with the folding table for the cookout and a paper bag, and she did not say one word about the bag. I poured the coffee. "He is not doing it to Bill," I said. "He is not doing it to his mother. I do not see him doing it to anyone else." She said, "Then it is not his age, is it." "That is what everybody keeps telling me." "I know what everybody keeps telling you." I said, "I shower every morning. I put clean clothes on before I go out there. I do not wear perfume." "I know you do." "Then what," I said. "Just tell me what." "30 years I worked in that building with women our age and older," she said. "Things change on a person. Your hair goes. Your knees go. Nobody's fault. You color it. You get a brace." "Your skin starts making something it never made before. It has a smell on it. Not a nice one." "I have never heard of that in my life." "Nobody has. Some women early, some late. Nobody warns you. It just turns up, like the gray." "And not one of those women was dirty," she said. "Not one of them. Some of them had daughters in there washing them twice a day." I sat with that a second. "Then I will shower twice a day." "That," she said, "is the part everybody gets wrong. Regular soap does not take it off." "Now you are being ridiculous." "Think about garlic," she said. "You chop garlic. Then you wash your hands. Twice, with soap. And?" I did not answer her. "And?" "They still smell." "They still smell. Your hands are clean and it stayed on them anyway. Because garlic leaves something behind that soap does not touch." "What our skin starts making is called nonenal," she said. "It works the same way. Soap runs off it." I sat there with my hands around a cup of coffee I had not drunk. "Then why has nobody ever told me?" "Who would. Bill would not notice a fire in this kitchen. And the ones who would notice are grown women, so they will not say it. I would not be saying it now if you had not called me straight out of a parking lot." Then she said the sentence I have thought about every day since. "Owen is 9. He has not learned yet to say nothing. That is the whole difference between that boy and the rest of us out in that yard." I put my hand over my mouth. "He is not being cruel to you, Jo. He does not know he is telling you anything at all. He only knows he wants to be over there." I went back through the whole week right there at that table with her. The pool. I got in the water. That put me 3 feet from him. The book. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my arm behind his head. The car. I put him next to me. The fort. I was standing at the corner with the clothespin. The towel. I was holding it open with both hands, which means he had to walk into it. Every one of them was a time I was close to him. Not one of them was a time I asked him for something, or told him no. Just close. He had not been pulling away from me. He had been pulling away from a distance, and I was the one standing in it. And the times he came running at me. The frogs. The sprinkler. Every one of them was from 6 feet away. "It is not dirt," Marlene said. "It is not your washing. You are one of the cleanest women I have ever known. It is chemistry, and it did not ask you first." "Then what gets it off." She pushed the paper bag across the table. "I was hoping you would ask me before I had to offer it." I opened the top of the bag. There was a bar in there, wrapped in soft paper, orange, with writing on the front I could not read. "It is soap," she said. "Persimmon. It does not cover it up. It takes it apart." I turned the corner of the paper back. Citrus. Warm, though. Not the sharp kind. "It is called Kaori," she said. "I bought a stack of them in the spring, when I heard they were stopping for the season. They only press it once a year. When a batch is gone, you wait on the next harvest." "And this works." "I sent half that building home with one. I have used it 9 years. You changed your face cream at 50 and never thought twice about it. You are still washing with what you used at 30." She got up and put her cup in the sink. "Use it tonight. And do not you say one word to that boy about any of this. Not one word. He is 9." At the door she turned around. "And do not sit in here being ashamed of something your own skin did without asking your permission." Then she went out on the porch to say hello to Owen, who ran at her, because he does. I used it that night, after they were both asleep. It is a bar of soap. I stood in my own shower at 10 at night and did not expect one single thing from it. I got out and dried off. It was still there on my arms. Warm. Not sweet. Saturday I did the whole routine anyway. The fetching. The quick hug. I did not know how to stop. Sunday morning I made myself sit still. He was in the pool by 8, because it was the last day and he knew it. I brought the little steps over and sat down on the bottom one with my feet in the water. Which is what I did the Sunday before. Which is the thing that started all of this. I did not look at him. I looked at the fence. He stayed in. He was on the far side with the mosasaur, and then he was not on the far side. He came over and stood in front of me in the water. He told me that a mosasaur is not a dinosaur, actually, and that everybody gets that wrong. He stayed there talking at me about it long enough that my feet went cold in 14 inches of water in July. That is the whole thing that happened. A boy stood in front of me and talked about a reptile. He never said one word about any of it. He does not know there was anything to say. He only knew he wanted to be over there. That morning he wanted to be here. He got out at 10 to get in the car. I was standing at the rail with the towel. He came up the steps to me, dripping the whole way, and let me put it around him. Then he leaned his forehead on my stomach for a second, the way he did when he was 4. I had about 4 things I wanted to say to that boy and I did not say one of them. At the car, with the door open, he asked when his week was next year. He asked Nicole. Nicole said, "Ask Grandma." He looked at me and said, "When is it." I said the first week of July. Same as always. He said, "Okay," and got in the car. The 3rd week of August, Nicole texted me the dates for next summer. I had not asked her. 5 years I have asked her every August, and this year I did not have to. I quit standing back from people. I did not know I had been doing it until I stopped. I keep the Kaori in the shower now. In the dish on the left. Marlene texted me last week. The new batch lands the 1st of September. Owen turns 10 in March. He has 1 of these left after this one. I am going to be in the water for it. If one of your grandchildren has started pulling back from you, and you cannot think of one reason why. If everybody in your family keeps telling you it is just his age. If you have started hugging them quick and letting go first, before they can do it to you. It maybe is not anything you did. Maybe you just need a better bar. It is a bar of soap. It costs less than a bottle of perfume. They give you 60 days on it. You can use the whole thing and still send it back. There is no harm in trying it. They press the persimmon once a year. The new batch lands the 1st of September. When a batch is gone, you wait on the next harvest. It is called Kaori. The link is below. It is the one that worked for me. Then get the pool out, and put the sign back up, and ask for the week. It was never his age. Your move.