I spent more afternoons at my grandma’s cottage than in my own house. My parents were always in motion—meetings, flights, dinners that didn’t start until nine—so I grew up on Grandma Jen’s creaky porch, listening to the floorboards complain and the kettle sing. She’d braid my hair before school with hands that were a little clumsy and a lot gentle, humming something tuneless and happy. Her braids never matched and never stayed, but when she patted my head and smiled, I felt like a queen.

Dinner at Grandma’s was never a surprise and always perfect: buttery potatoes, squeaky green beans, eggs scrambled low and slow, sausage if she’d found a good deal. She cooked by feel, not by book. “Meals that stick to your bones,” she’d say, sliding a plate toward me. After dishes, she’d sit beside me with a tiny bowl of walnuts—already cracked and cleaned into neat little halves. She pressed them into my palm like treasures.

I’d tug at my collar and touch the scar that ran like a pale ribbon down my chest. I’d spent too many years in hospital gowns, counting ceiling tiles and waiting out beeping nights. My heart had been mended more than once. But Grandma said “strong” like it meant something beyond muscle and medicine. “In all the ways that matter,” she said, tapping her chest. “The ways you can’t see on a scan.”

Then I got older, and life sped up. Private school, ski trips, summers in Italy, dinner reservations you had to make months in advance. My parents measured love in upgrades. Somewhere in there, the cottage that once smelled like lavender and sunshine became “stuffy” in my head. I still visited, but I did it with one earbud in and my thumb flicking through feeds. I opened windows without asking, wrinkled my nose and made faces I would later hate myself for. Read more below