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It Was Our 28th Beach Week Together. My Mother Stopped on the Landing of the Cottage Stairs and Did Not Look Up. I want to tell you about that week. I want to tell you because of what happened in the year after, and because the year after would not have happened if I had not been on the landing behind her, watching her stop. My name is Heather. I am 54. I live in Pittsburgh with my husband Mike. We have been married 31 years. We have two grown sons and a daughter who is finishing her last year of nursing school. My mother, Dorothy — Dot to everyone who has known her since she was a girl in the 1950s — lives in the house I grew up in, outside Columbus, Ohio. She is 72. She was a high school English teacher for 36 years. She retired in 2018. My father Frank died three years ago, at 70, of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed in March and gone by July. It was as gentle a death as cancer ever gives anyone, which is not very gentle. My mother was 69 when she became a widow. I drive out to see her every three or four weeks. I call her on Sundays. She comes to Pittsburgh for holidays. And every September, since 1998, Mom and I have spent the week after Labor Day together in a small rental cottage in Cape May, New Jersey. This past September was our twenty-eighth year. I want you to understand what the beach week means to my mother and to me. We started it the year I turned 26 and was going through a long, slow separation from my first husband. My mother drove out from Ohio one Friday afternoon, packed a suitcase for both of us, and put me in the passenger seat of her station wagon. We drove all night and got to Cape May at sunrise on a Saturday in September. She had booked a one-bedroom cottage three blocks from the beach for a week. We had no plans. We walked, we ate seafood, we read on the porch, and one afternoon she let me cry for two hours on the couch about a marriage I was about to leave. We have gone back every year since. The cottage has changed twice in twenty-eight years — it was sold once, and the new owner remodeled it, and we kept coming back. The owner now knows my mother by name. She holds the same week for us every year without asking. It is a one-bedroom on the second floor of an old converted Victorian. There are two flights of stairs from the street to the door. There is a small porch overlooking a quiet side street. The walk to the beach is three blocks: one block down to Beach Avenue, then two blocks along it to the boardwalk. When my mother was 50 and we started this tradition, she took those stairs without holding the railing. She walked to the beach in eight minutes. She walked a full mile north along the sand every morning before breakfast, alone, while I slept in. I have watched her do all three of those things for almost three decades. This past September was different. We pulled up to the cottage on a Sunday afternoon. I parked the car at the curb. I unloaded the suitcases. My mother got out of the passenger seat slowly. She held the door of the car with one hand and steadied herself with the other. I pretended not to notice. I carried both of our suitcases up the first flight of stairs. I came back down for the cooler. She came up after me, one stair at a time, her left hand on the railing. She made it to the landing between the first and second flights. She stopped. She set her purse down on the landing. She put her right hand on the railing too. She did not look up. I was three steps above her, holding the cooler. She caught her breath for what felt like a long time but was probably forty seconds. Then she said, quietly: "Heather, give me a minute, honey." I said: "Take all the time you need." She took another minute and a half on that landing. Then she came up the second flight. I had her settled in the cottage with a glass of cold water within five minutes. She told me she had gotten dizzy in the car driving over the Delaware Memorial Bridge and just needed a little while. I believed her about the dizziness. I did not believe her about the just. I want to be careful about how I describe what I noticed across the rest of the week, because most of what I noticed I had been seeing on monthly visits for at least a year. Cape May has a way of concentrating things. When you see someone every three weeks for short visits in their own kitchen, you can talk yourself out of what you are seeing. When you spend seven days with them in a small cottage where they cannot retreat to the bedroom they grew up in, you cannot. The walk to the beach took twenty-five minutes on Monday morning. We stopped twice. She held my elbow the second time without saying anything. I held it back without saying anything. The walk had been an eight-minute walk for twenty-five years. The morning mile on the beach did not happen. She walked with me to the boardwalk and back — about four hundred yards round-trip — and asked to sit on a bench in the gazebo for fifteen minutes before we made the three blocks back to the cottage. At breakfast on Tuesday, she wrapped both her hands around her coffee mug for warmth. It was 76 degrees outside. The kitchen of the cottage was warm. The coffee was hot. She had been wrapping both hands around her coffee mug for two years. I had been noticing it for two years. I had been pretending not to notice it for two years. On Wednesday, she carried her own small canvas bag from the car after we made a grocery run. She put it on the kitchen counter and then she sat down on the kitchen stool and caught her breath for almost a minute. The bag had three lemons and a half-gallon of milk and a small box of crackers in it. On Thursday night, she fell asleep on the porch couch at 7:45. She used to read with me on that porch until midnight. On Friday morning I made coffee and went out to the porch with the newspaper. She was already sitting in the chair by the railing watching the sunrise over the side street. She looked at me and she said: "Heather. We should talk about something." I sat down next to her. She said: "I have been telling Dr. Acharya for two years that I am fine. I am not as fine as I have been telling her. I think you have been noticing for longer than you have been saying." I started to say something. She held up her hand. She said: "She wants to put me on a blood pressure medication. She has wanted to for a year and a half. I have been doing the walking and the salt restriction and the things she asked me to do first, and it has not been quite enough. We're at the point where she's going to start the conversation in earnest at my next visit." She paused. She said: "Dr. Acharya and I have been hoping the basics would be enough for a while longer. We are at the point where they might not be, and I am open to the medication if she recommends it at the February visit. I just wanted you to know I see it, Heather. I am not pretending. I am just trying to figure out what comes next." We sat on the porch for almost an hour. I did not have anything wise to say. I held her hand. I drove her back to Ohio on Saturday. I drove home to Pittsburgh on Sunday. I sat in my own kitchen Sunday night with a cup of tea after Mike went to bed and I called my aunt Patricia in Maine. Aunt Trish is my mother's older sister. She is 76. She lives in a small house outside Camden, Maine, with her husband Bill, who is 78. She has always been the more practical of the two sisters. My mother is the more lyrical. They have always balanced each other. I told her about the cottage stairs and the bench in the gazebo and the bag of three lemons and what my mother had said on the porch. Trish listened the whole way through. When I was done she said: "Heather. I want to tell you something." I said: "Okay." She said: "I have been taking a beetroot capsule every morning for about four years. A friend of mine — her name is Margaret, you met her once at Christmas when you were about fourteen — gave me a bottle in 2021. She had been taking it for two years before that. She wasn't pushy about it. She just slid the bottle across her kitchen table one afternoon and said, 'I want you to read about this when you get home.'" She paused. "I am 76 years old. My blood pressure has been in the range Bill's doctor wants it in for a while now. I climb the stairs to our bedroom at night without thinking about them. I walk Bill's dog two miles every morning. I am not telling you any of this is because of the capsule, because I don't know what is because of what. I am telling you that I am 76 and I am where I am, and the capsule is the most distinctive thing I have added in the last decade." I asked her the name. She said: "Rosabella. I will spell it for you so you don't have to write it down." She spelled it. I wrote it on a Post-it note and stuck it to the side of the kitchen cabinet. She said one more thing. She said: "Heather. If you decide to bring this to your mother, the first thing you and she should do is take it to Dr. Acharya. Promise me that. Don't bring it to your mother without doing that first." I said: "I promise." I sat with it for two weeks. I am a person who reads before she acts. I spent two evenings on my laptop after work. I skipped past the supplement-company landing pages. The active compound in beets — something called betalains — has decades of peer-reviewed research behind it on how it supports the body's natural antioxidant balance, including in the way the body supports healthy circulation and cardiovascular wellness. The research wasn't trendy. It wasn't fringe. I noted what came up about processing: that the active compound is sensitive to heat, and that most commercial methods cook it off. I noted that Rosabella specifically uses cold-pressing at low temperatures and grows on small farms in Lancaster County. I drove out to Ohio the second weekend in October. I sat at my mother's kitchen table on a Saturday morning. I brought the Post-it note in my pocket. I waited until we had finished our breakfast and were on our second cups of coffee. I told her about the call with Aunt Trish. She listened the whole way through. She did not interrupt me once. When I was done she said: "Heather. Why are you bringing this to me?" I said: "Because Trish is 76 and walks two miles every morning, and you stopped on the landing of the cottage stairs in September. And because Trish told me about it the way she would tell me about a book she loved. And because she said the most useful thing for her was to bring it to her own doctor first, and that we could do the same with Dr. Acharya. And because I cannot watch you become a smaller version of yourself, Mom. I just can't." She was quiet for a minute. She said: "Will you call Dr. Acharya's office with me on Monday?" I said: "Yes." We called Dr. Acharya's office on Monday morning. My mother put me on speaker. We spoke to the nurse first. My mother told her what we were thinking about and asked whether there was any reason she shouldn't add a beetroot capsule to what she was already doing. She told the nurse about the over-the-counter multivitamin she takes and the calcium tablet and the small dose of aspirin she had started on her own after my father's diagnosis. She has no prescription medications. The nurse put us on hold for about five minutes. She came back and said: "Dr. Acharya says beetroot has good research behind it for antioxidant support and for supporting healthy circulation and cardiovascular wellness. She says it is a sensible thing for Dot to add. She'd like Dot to keep doing what she's already doing — the walking, the salt restriction — and not change anything else at the same time, so we can see clearly what shifts. She'd like to see her at her next regular visit in February to talk about how she's feeling. There is no concern about interaction with the multivitamin, the calcium, or the aspirin." My mother thanked her. I ordered a bottle from my own laptop that afternoon, with my mother sitting next to me in her own kitchen. It came in four days. She started taking two capsules with her breakfast on the second Thursday in October. She didn't change anything else. She didn't start a new diet. She didn't start a new exercise plan. She just added the capsules. I am going to tell you what we noticed in the months that followed. But I want to be careful about how I say it. I cannot tell you that beetroot fixed anything. I am not a doctor. I am not in healthcare. I am a 54-year-old school district administrator, and I am telling you what I noticed in my mother, the way Aunt Trish told me what she had noticed in herself. The first thing was the phone calls. About three weeks in, on a Sunday morning, I called my mother from my kitchen the way I do every Sunday. She picked up on the second ring. She told me she had just come in from a walk. She had walked four blocks to the corner store to buy a Sunday newspaper. She had not walked four blocks to the corner store in over two years. She had been having the paper delivered. I said: "Mom. Did the paper not come?" She said: "It came. I just wanted to walk." The second thing was the stairs. I drove to Ohio for a long weekend the second week of November. My mother lives in a two-story house. She had been sleeping in the first-floor guest room for about a year. She had moved most of her clothes downstairs. I came down on Saturday morning and the guest room was empty. The bed had been made up the way it is when no one has slept in it. I went upstairs. My mother was in her own bedroom — the one she had shared with my father for forty-three years. She was making the bed. She said: "I came back up here about two weeks ago. I am sleeping in our bed again." I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute. I did not cry where she could see me. I cried about twenty minutes later in my own car when I went out to get bagels. The third thing was Christmas. She came up to Pittsburgh for Christmas. She arrived on the 23rd and stayed until the 27th. On Christmas Eve she carried two of the grandchildren's presents from her car to the front door of our house. On Christmas morning she sat on the floor with our youngest grandson — he was two — and played with him for almost an hour. She got up off the floor without help. She did not brace herself against the coffee table on the way up. I caught Mike's eye across the living room. He had been watching her too. We did not say anything to each other. The fourth thing was Aunt Trish. In February, my mother flew to Maine for a week to visit her sister. She had not flown alone in three years. She walked Bill's dog the two-mile route with Trish on the third morning of the visit. She made it the whole way. Trish called me that night, after my mother had gone to bed. She said: "Heather. Your mother is back." I said: "I know." She said: "I am crying in my kitchen and I want you to know it." I said: "I am crying in mine, Aunt Trish." We stayed on the phone for about twenty minutes without saying very much. My mother saw Dr. Acharya in February for the visit we had scheduled in October. I drove out to be there with her. Dr. Acharya looked at the bloodwork. She looked at my mother. She asked her what she had been doing differently. My mother told her. Dr. Acharya said: "Dot. The picture this winter is in better shape than I have seen in a few years. Whatever you have added, keep doing it." She paused. She said: "I am going to be honest with you. I have been a primary care doctor for twenty-one years. I have watched a lot of women in their seventies navigate this part of life. Bodies change, and we will keep watching things at each visit going forward. But the picture this visit is what it is, and so whatever you've added, do not change it back." My mother held my hand on the drive home. She did not say anything for a long time. Then, somewhere outside Columbus, she said: "Heather. Thank you." I said: "Mom. Aunt Trish is the one who told me." She said: "I know. But you are the one who drove out and sat at my kitchen table with a Post-it note in your pocket." We are going back to Cape May in September. It will be our twenty-ninth year. I have already booked the cottage. The owner asked me on the phone how my mother was doing, the way she has every September for years. I said: "She's doing well." The owner said: "Tell Dot I said hello, and that I'm looking forward to having both of you on the porch again." I have been thinking about the landing of those stairs every week for a year. I have been thinking about my mother on that landing, with her purse set down and both her hands on the railing and her head not coming up. I do not know yet what I will see when she comes up those stairs in September. I am hopeful. I have a kind of hope I had not let myself have in a long time. If it goes the way I hope it does, I will sit on the porch with her and we will read until midnight again. If it doesn't, I will sit on the porch with her anyway, and we will read until whatever hour her body asks us to stop, and I will be grateful for every minute of it. P.S. If your mother — or your aunt, or your mother-in-law, or any older woman whose decline you have been quietly absorbing into "she's just getting older" — has been showing you the signs that I had been seeing in my mother, the first thing to do is not order a bottle of anything. The first thing is for her to talk to her own doctor. The doctor who knows her body. Tell that doctor what she has been noticing. Some of what is happening may be exactly what she has been told. Some of it may not be. She will not know until somebody who can look at her whole picture hears what she has been describing. P.P.S. If after that she decides to try Rosabella, have her do what my mother did. Call her doctor's office first. The way we did. One phone call. Five minutes. Most nurses will get an answer the same day. Then have her take two capsules with water in the morning. Don't change anything else. Just add this one thing. Give it a few weeks before deciding anything. Some women notice something within the first two or three weeks. Others take longer. Bodies are different. Be patient with hers. P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If she's not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives her long enough to actually see whether it helps before she decides. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. The beets are grown on small farms in Lancaster County, cold-pressed at low temperatures so the betalains stay intact rather than getting cooked off the way they do in most processing. The harvest is once a year and they bottle on their own schedule, so my mother and I both keep an extra bottle in the cabinet now. They currently have a multi-bottle option that I went with myself the second time I ordered. Worth a look. P.P.P.P.P.S. Aunt Trish is flying down to Pittsburgh next month to spend a long weekend with us. She is 76. She is going to take the train from Portland to Boston and the plane from Boston to Pittsburgh, all by herself, in one day. She will arrive at our house at 8 in the evening. I will drive her to my mother's the next morning. The two of them are going to spend the weekend at my mother's house and at our house alternately. They have not had a long weekend together — just the two of them — in eleven years. My mother has been on the phone with Trish for an hour every Sunday for the past five months, planning what they want to do, what they want to cook, what they want to talk about. If you have a mother and a sister-of-your-mother who used to be able to take a long weekend together and have stopped, I hope they get one back. I hope your mother gets her phone calls back. I hope you get to hear her on the other end of the line laughing at something her sister has just said, the way I heard my mother laugh last Sunday evening when I came in through the back door without her knowing, and stood in my own hallway with my coat still on, listening. That is the whole reason I wrote this. Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.