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My son called to say maybe this year was the year we did something easier instead of hosting the grandkids. I had ten years of cards in a box. For ten summers I've hosted my son David's three children for the last two weeks of July. They come up from Charlotte. I drive them to the lake every other morning. I let them eat ice cream before lunch. I take them to the strawberry farm and the little independent bookstore in town and the public pool on the days when there's nothing else. It started when David was thirty-one and his oldest, Henry, was four. Henry could already swim, sort of. David and his wife Marisol had been working overtime that summer because David was up for partner at his firm and Marisol was finishing her board certification. They had three kids under six. They needed a break. I said: send them. I had been alone with Robert's grief for two years. I needed them too. I just didn't know how to say it. They came for ten days that first summer. The kids slept in the bedrooms that used to be David and his sister Beth's rooms when they were children. They drew pictures on the deck and watched fireflies and called me Grandma and refused to call me by my first name even when Henry could read the labels in the medicine cabinet. At the end of ten days I cried in the bathroom after David drove away. The next summer they came for twelve days. The year after that, fourteen. We landed on two weeks and we've been doing two weeks for nine summers now. Every year, the night before they leave, the kids make me a card. They start in the morning at the kitchen table with construction paper and glitter glue and the markers I keep in a drawer for exactly this. They write GRANDMA and they draw the lake. Sometimes there's a fish. Sometimes there's a sun. Sometimes there's the cat down the street. I have a box at the back of the linen closet with every card. Henry is fourteen now. Sophie is twelve. Owen is nine. In April, David called. It was a Tuesday afternoon. I was on the porch with a coffee. David is the kind of son who calls at odd hours when he's been thinking about something for a long time. He never opens with chitchat. "Mom. I want to talk to you about July." "Sure." "Marisol and I were thinking maybe this year we do something easier." I waited. "The kids are bigger now. Henry's going into ninth grade. Sophie's in middle school. They've got camps and a soccer thing and Owen has a music thing. And the drive up is a lot. Marisol's been on her feet at the hospital all year and I just thought, maybe instead of the two weeks at your place, we do a long weekend and meet you somewhere central. Or maybe you come down to Charlotte for a week. We could get you a room at the hotel by us. The kids could come over for dinners." I didn't say anything. "Mom. Are you there." "I'm here." "It's just — the lake house is a lot. The cooking and the driving them around and — Mom, we've been doing this for ten years. You've been doing this for ten years. I don't want you to feel like you have to." "I don't feel like I have to." "I know. I know you don't. But I've been watching you for a couple of summers now and I just — I just want to make sure you're not doing it because you think you have to." I waited. He said it before I could ask. "And I worry about your feet on the wood floors at the lake house. Last summer when Owen broke the lamp and you went down to the basement to get the broom and the dust pan, I watched you on the stairs. You were holding the railing both ways." I held my coffee. He said: "I just want to be honest with you. Marisol and I have been talking. We think maybe it's time." It's time. The third person in this family to say those words to me in nine months. I told him I'd think about it. I hung up. I sat on the porch for another hour. Then I went inside and pulled the box of cards down from the linen closet. There were one hundred and forty-three cards. Some of them were from Sophie when she was three and could only draw circles. Some of them were from Henry when he was twelve and had written GRANDMA YOU MAKE THE BEST PANCAKES IN THE WORLD across the top of a piece of yellow construction paper in green marker. I sat on the floor with the box for an hour. Then I called Diana. Diana is my hairdresser. She owns the salon on Main Street, six blocks from my house. She's fifty, she runs the salon by herself with one apprentice, she is on her feet ten hours a day six days a week, and she has been cutting my hair for fourteen years. She is the only person I know personally who is on her feet more than I have been. I told her about David. She was quiet for a moment. "Sarah. He's wrong." "He's not wrong." "He's right about something else. He's right that you've been on the railing both ways for two summers. He's wrong that the railing is the problem. The railing is a symptom. You've been wearing house shoes around that lake house for ten summers. The same canvas slip-ons. I see them when you come in for your cut. You wear them around town." "They're comfortable." "They were comfortable in 2014, Sarah. In 2024 they're broken down inside. The arch is gone. The toe box has spread to the shape of your bunion. You've been wearing them flat into the ground. They are the reason you held the railing both ways." I didn't say anything. "I've been cutting hair for thirty years. The first ten years I was in pain by Thursday. The second ten I figured out the trick. I haven't been in pain at the salon in eleven years. Do you know why." "Why." "Because in 2013 I changed my shoe. And I have been changing it every two years since then. I'm on my fourth pair now." She sent me a link. "This is the same shoe I'm wearing right now in the chair next to yours. Knit slip-on. The front is wide. The sole is flat. The toes have actual room. I have been telling my clients for a year. Mrs. Halpern has them. Carla up at the dental office has them. The new yoga teacher at the studio across the street has them." "And they look like what." "They look like a clean shoe. They don't look medical. They don't look like the canvas slip-ons you've been ruining. You could wear them on the dock at the lake house and you could wear them to David's office holiday party in December and neither place would notice." She paused. "They do small drops. Cream is the one that goes fast. I'm on the lavender right now. There was something running where you grab the second pair and the second one's free, so I got the cream and the apricot for myself last month." I scrolled the link at the kitchen table. I ordered the cream and the lavender. The box came on a Thursday. I opened it on the kitchen counter. Cream knit, the color of an oyster shell. Lavender knit, the color of the inside of an iris. I went upstairs. In the back of my dresser, in the same green leather wallet from Galway, was a small envelope. Inside the envelope was a piece of yellow construction paper folded in quarters. GRANDMA YOU MAKE THE BEST PANCAKES IN THE WORLD. Henry. 2022. He'd been twelve. I had kept this one out of the box from the start. It had been in the wallet for three years. I put the envelope in the inside zip pocket of my purse. Before anything else. The next morning I called David back. "David. The kids are coming up in July. Two weeks. The way we always do." "Mom." "David." "I don't want you to push yourself." "I'm not pushing myself. I'm hosting. There's a difference." He was quiet. "Mom — " "I bought new shoes." He didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "Okay, Mom." "Two weeks." "Two weeks." The kids arrived on July sixteenth. Henry was the same height as me now. Sophie had her mother's quiet smile. Owen was missing a tooth. The first morning I made pancakes. Henry said: "Grandma. Pancakes." I said: "Yes, Henry. Pancakes." We did the lake every other day. We did the strawberry farm twice. We did the bookstore three times because Sophie was reading a series. We did the public pool on the only day it rained for half an hour. On day eleven, Owen broke the same lamp he'd broken last year. I went down to the basement to get the broom. The stairs were the same. I went down. I came up. I had a broom in one hand and a dust pan in the other. I did not hold the railing. Day fourteen. The night before they left. The kids were at the table making the card. Henry was at the head of the table with a pencil. Sophie was working on a watercolor of the lake. Owen was gluing glitter. I came in with coffee. I was wearing the lavender shoes. Sophie looked up. "Grandma. Are those new." "They are." "Can I have a pair when I'm bigger." Henry looked up. "Mom said you had foot trouble." "Your mom was wrong about that." He nodded. He wrote something on his piece of paper. He covered it with his hand. I went out to the porch. In the morning David came to pick them up. He stayed for lunch. The kids got in the car. David hugged me at the driveway. "Mom. About April." "It's fine." "It's not fine." "It's fine, David." He looked at my feet. "Where did you get those." I told him. "Marisol's been trying to find something like that for a year. Her last hospital pair gave out. Have you got a name." "Cloud Walk. By Nimbao." "And they're — " "Small drops. Some colors low. Once a color goes for the season it doesn't come back. There was something running where you grab the second pair and the second one's free." He wrote it on his hand with a pen. "Okay, Mom." He drove away. I went inside. On the kitchen table was the card. It was a piece of light blue construction paper with a watercolor of the lake on the front, in Sophie's hand. Inside, in Henry's handwriting: DEAR GRANDMA, THANK YOU FOR HOSTING US FOR TEN SUMMERS. SOPHIE AND OWEN AND I ARE STILL WAITING FOR PANCAKES NEXT JULY. — HENRY, SOPHIE, OWEN. At the bottom, in pencil, Henry had added: P.S. MOM WAS WRONG. I put the card in the box with the other one hundred and forty-three. Then I put the box back in the linen closet. Here's what I learned. For ten summers I had been doing one thing that I loved more than anything else in my widowhood. My son had been watching me do it for ten years. In year ten he decided the railing was a problem. He wasn't wrong about the railing. He was wrong about why I was holding it. I had been wearing house shoes I had broken down ten years ago. The arch had gone in 2017. The toe box had spread to my bunion in 2020. I had been telling myself the canvas slip-ons were comfortable for at least three years past the point when they had stopped being. I had been making my son worry by wearing the wrong shoe. I had not known I was making him worry. The shoes didn't fix the worry. The shoes let him stop worrying. If your son has called you in April to suggest something easier — If he has been gentle about it and you have heard the gentleness as something else — If you've been wearing the same broken-down house shoes for ten years and calling it comfort — Look at the shoe before you cancel the summer. Not because it solves everything. The lake house stairs are still wooden. The grandkids still break the lamp. Henry is still going to be the same height as me by Christmas. But because the moment you realize the railing was about the shoe — that's the moment you get the summer back. Diana has the cream and the apricot. Mrs. Halpern has the lavender. Marisol called the company before I'd finished pulling out of David's driveway. 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 box of cards is back on the shelf. It is heavier than it was in April. Owen wants to come up early next year. Your move.