Lisa, my daughter-in-law, arrived at six sharp, sweeping in without knocking, as was her custom. She’d married my son, Michael, twelve years ago, and from day one, she had viewed me as an outdated relic, a quaint antique to be tolerated but never taken seriously.

“Dorothy, you didn’t need to go to all this trouble,” she’d said, her eyes scanning the table with an expression that suggested I had, in fact, gone to far too little trouble. “We could have just ordered takeout.”

My granddaughter, fifteen-year-old Katie, offered a mumbled, “Hey, Grandma,” her eyes glued to the glowing screen of her phone, before slumping into her chair. I tried to remember the last time she had run to hug me. The bright, gap-toothed smile of her childhood had been replaced by a studied, teenage indifference, an attitude subtly encouraged by her mother’s whispers about grandmothers who “tried too hard.”