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My daughter handed me a modified itinerary for our Mediterranean cruise. The port days were blank. She said I'd earned a spa day. My daughter Beth is thirty-two. She's a real estate broker in Charlotte and is married to a financial advisor named Marcus. She'd been planning the Mediterranean cruise for six months — ten days, Barcelona to Athens, with port stops in Marseille, Rome, Naples, Mykonos, and Santorini. It was supposed to be the trip Robert and I never took. Robert and I had done Italy in 1998 and Greece in 2003. We'd talked about a Mediterranean cruise our whole marriage. The kind where you wake up in a different country and walk off the ship and find your own way to a beach or a ruin or a market. We were going to do it for our fortieth anniversary. He died at fifty-eight. We were married thirty-two years. Beth knew this. She booked the cruise as her gift for me — for the seventh anniversary of his death, which fell on the third day at sea. She had been thinking about it for two years before she booked. Three days before the cruise, she came over with a printed itinerary. She'd had it bound at the FedEx in spiral. Cream cover stock. A little watercolor on the front of a Greek island. She handed it to me at the kitchen counter and said: "Mom. I wanted to walk you through the plan. Just to make sure we have a good rhythm." I opened it. Day one: At sea. Welcome dinner. Day two: Marseille. Beth and Marcus: Old Port walking tour and bouillabaisse lunch. Sarah: spa morning, light lunch on board, library terrace afternoon. Day three: At sea. Day four: Rome (Civitavecchia). Beth and Marcus: shore excursion to the Forum and Colosseum. Sarah: spa day on board. Day five: Naples. Beth and Marcus: Pompeii day trip. Sarah: at-sea reading day. It went on like that. Eight ports. Five spa days for Sarah. Three "library terrace" days for Sarah. Zero ports for Sarah. I looked at Beth. "Mom. I know it's a lot of spa. But you've been doing so much for everyone. I just wanted you to have a real rest. You've earned it. And the cobblestones are tough — Rome, Pompeii, Mykonos — I just thought, this is the trip where you finally let someone take care of you." She kept saying take care of you. "And the seventh anniversary," she added. "That falls on day four. I figured you'd want a quiet day." I closed the itinerary. I thanked her. I didn't argue. I drove home from her house that afternoon. I sat in the driveway with the engine off for ten minutes before I went inside. The thing about being a widow at fifty-eight is that everyone is gentle with you. Some of the gentleness is right. Most of the gentleness, after seven years, is wrong. I called Linnea that night. Linnea was a Delta flight attendant for thirty years. She retired four years ago and started a travel blog for women over fifty-five. She has done the Mediterranean cruise circuit more times than the cruise director. She is sixty-one and writes about long walking days in Spanish coastal towns from her apartment in Athens. I read her the itinerary. She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Sarah. What does Beth think the seventh anniversary is going to feel like." "I don't know." "Yes you do. She thinks you're going to come apart on day four if you're not on a heated stone in a robe. She doesn't know what grief looks like at year seven." "Year seven doesn't look like year one." "I know. She doesn't." I waited. "What do you actually want to do in Naples on day five." "I want to do Pompeii. I want to do it the way Robert and I would have done it. Long lunch in town first, then the ruins in the late afternoon when the heat breaks." "Then that's what you're doing." I sat with the phone. "How many bags were you bringing." "Two. Plus a backpack." "One bag. Carry-on. You walk onto that ship with one bag and you walk off in every port. You don't change shoes. You don't argue with Beth. You just go." She sent me a link. "This is what I've been wearing for the cobblestones in Plaka for three years. Knit slip-on, the front is wide so the toes don't compress when you push off uphill. Sole sits flat. I've walked twenty-five thousand step days in Athens in them without a hot spot. They look like a normal shoe. You can wear them to dinner at the captain's table. Nobody is going to think you're in athletic gear." I scrolled the link. "And the colors." "They release them in small drops. Five hundred pairs per color sometimes. The cream sold out in three days last batch. There was something running where you grab two pairs and the second one's free — I got the lavender and the apricot last spring before a writers' retreat in Portofino. Once a color goes for the season it doesn't come back." I ordered the apricot and the cream. The box came on the day before the flight to Barcelona. I opened it on the kitchen counter. Both pairs lighter than I expected. I went upstairs. On the inside of my jewelry drawer, in a small velvet pouch I hadn't opened in five years, was an enamel pin. A NATO logo, blue and white, about the size of a quarter. Robert had been an army officer attached to the embassy in Brussels in 1991 and 1992. The pin had been on the lapel of his uniform jacket. After he died I'd taken it off the jacket before donating it. I hadn't known what to do with it. I picked it up. I put it on a thin gold chain I had in the drawer. I put the chain around my neck. Before anything else. The flight to Barcelona was overnight. I landed Saturday morning with one bag. The cruise boarded Sunday at noon. I checked into the hotel near the port and changed into the apricot shoes and walked the Gothic Quarter for six hours. The plaça reial. The cathedral. I had lunch at a place Robert and I had eaten at twenty-eight years ago. I came back to the hotel at sundown. My feet were not asking me anything. Sunday morning. Boarding. Beth and Marcus were at the welcome dinner that night. I was wearing the cream shoes under a navy dress. Beth looked at my feet across the table. "Mom. Are those flats." "They are." "For the dinner." "For the trip." She glanced at Marcus. He didn't say anything. She didn't bring up the itinerary. Day two. Marseille. I came up to the bridge deck at six AM with a coffee. Beth was at breakfast at the buffet at seven thirty. She was wearing brown leather sandals. The kind that look elegant for fifteen minutes and need a band-aid by lunch. I walked off the ship at the Old Port gangway at eight. I had the cream shoes on. I did the bouillabaisse lunch by myself at a place on the Quai de Rive Neuve. I walked the cathedral. I walked the calanques up to the chapel above the city. Twenty-two thousand steps. Beth and Marcus were back on the ship at three thirty. Beth had a blister on her right heel. She saw me at the pool deck. "Mom. You went into town." "I did." "How was the spa." "I didn't go to the spa." She blinked. "I did the bouillabaisse lunch at that place on the Quai. I walked up to the chapel." "Mom." "It was a long day. My feet are fine." She didn't say anything. Day four. Civitavecchia. The seventh anniversary. I had been planning this day for two years myself, without telling anyone. The plan was: take the train into Rome, walk to the small church off the Via dei Coronari where Robert and I had lit a candle in 1998, sit in the church for an hour, then have lunch at a trattoria around the corner Robert had loved, then walk back to the train. The whole thing was four miles of walking. Most of it cobblestone. I did it. I sat in the church for an hour. I lit the candle. I read the page from the notebook in my purse — Robert's handwriting, from our 1998 honeymoon — that I had folded into a small square. I had lunch at the trattoria. Pasta cacio e pepe and a glass of Cesanese del Piglio. The owner — eighties, the same owner who'd been there in 1998 — recognized Robert from a photograph I showed him on my phone. I was back on the ship by five. Beth was waiting on the pool deck. She had been crying. "Mom. I called your room at lunch. The steward said you'd left the ship at seven this morning." "I did." "Where did you go." I told her. She looked at her hands. "I thought you'd want a quiet day." "I had a quiet day." She sat with that. Day five. Naples. I was in the breakfast buffet at six thirty. A woman at the next table — early fifties, sharp glasses, a notebook open beside her plate — looked at my shoes. She said: "Excuse me. Is that a Luh — sorry, what are those." She was a writer for Saveur. She'd been doing a piece on the food markets of the western Mediterranean. I told her. Cloud Walk. By Nimbao. She wrote it down. "I've been carrying a pair of plain hiking sandals through this whole cruise. By the time I got to the Boqueria in Barcelona my feet were done. I should have brought what you're wearing. Where did you order yours." I told her. I told her about the small drops. She wrote that down too. "My editor has a foot thing. She has been quietly looking for a shoe she could wear to her daughter's wedding in Provence. I'm going to send her a message right now." I did Pompeii that afternoon. Alone, with my notebook, in the late-afternoon light when the heat had broken. Beth and Marcus had done the ruins in the morning. They were back on the ship by noon. Marcus had bought a brace for Beth's heel at the pharmacy in town. Day eight. Santorini. The famous donkey path up from the old port to Fira. Five hundred and eighty-eight stone steps. Cruisers either take the cable car or hire a donkey. I walked it. 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 ate an apricot. I was at the top before Beth's cable car arrived. She found me at a café in Fira with a glass of assyrtiko. "Mom." "Beth." She looked at her feet. "I walked up too. From the cable car station to here. It's about a mile. The cobblestones are killing me." "I'm sorry." "You're not sorry." "I'm not." She laughed. Then she sat down. "I had a whole itinerary." "I know." "You're not even looking at it." "No." "Mom." I waited. "I should have asked." "Yes." "What are those shoes." I told her. "And they're — " "They do small drops. The cream's almost gone. Apricot's still available. Once a color goes for the season it doesn't come back." She wrote the name down on the back of the spa schedule she'd been carrying around. The last night. The captain's dinner. The cruise director — a Greek man named Petros, about sixty, who'd been working this circuit for eighteen years — was standing at the door welcoming guests. He smiled at me. "Mrs. Sarah. You and your daughter." "Yes." "You walked Pompeii alone." "I did." "My wife has been telling me about the shoes. She saw the Saveur writer's note this morning on a Greek travel forum. She is sixty-three. She is calling the company tomorrow." I told him. "Apricot. Cream. Some colors going fast." He repeated it slowly. "Apricot. Cream." He walked us to our table. Here's what I learned. For seven years I had been letting my daughter take care of me on a schedule that didn't match the year I was in. Beth was thirty-two and she had been carrying the grief of losing her father for seven years too. She had been figuring out how to take care of me on his behalf. She had been writing the itinerary that he would have written if he were the one taking care of me. But he wasn't. He had been dead for seven years. I had been navigating year seven of widowhood for almost a year before I noticed. Beth had not noticed because nobody told her the calendar. The itinerary wasn't wrong about my feet. The itinerary was wrong about which year it was. The shoes didn't change the calendar. The shoes let me show Beth which year it was. If someone has been writing the itinerary on your behalf — If they've labeled your days spa and you've been quietly tired of it — If you've been letting them write because you couldn't figure out where you were in your own calendar — Look at the shoe before you sign the itinerary. Not because it solves everything. The seventh anniversary is still the seventh anniversary. The cobblestones are still the cobblestones. Beth is still going to want to carry me on her back for the next thirty years. But because the moment you realize the itinerary was written for last year's you — that's the moment you get to write a new one. Linnea has the lavender and the apricot. The Saveur writer's editor ordered the cream from a wedding rental shop in Provence. Petros's wife is ordering the apricot from Crete tonight. 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. Beth has the cream. She bought them at the FedEx on Charlotte Avenue when we got home. She wears them to her client showings. Your move.