My own daughter told me, “Mom, don’t come to the l…

We get older. We begin preferring function to ritual. But there was something else in it.

Something colder. She stopped asking if I needed help in the kitchen. She stopped sitting with me on the porch in the mornings while I drank coffee and watched the water.

Instead, she and Kevin took the kids out on rented boats and came back sunburned and laughing while I stood at the screen door with a pitcher of lemonade no one had requested. I noticed. I just did not yet understand what those observations were trying to tell me.

Thanksgiving that year, we all came back to Atlanta. I cooked too much, as usual. Turkey.

Dressing. Greens. Macaroni and cheese.

Cranberry relish from scratch because Samuel liked it tart, not sweet. After dinner, while I was wrapping leftovers and Pauline was snoring softly in the den recliner, Lorraine pulled me aside into the hallway. “Mom,” she said, in that careful tone adult children use when they are about to present selfishness as administration, “Kevin and I were thinking.