One day in September, after my wife Ellie and I visited a Senator in the Hart building, we met up with Ellyn Miller (Gabriella Miller’s mother) on a beautiful blue-sky morning in front of the Cannon House Building in Washington, DC. Ellyn had walked there from Union Station. We were there to lobby for medical research funds. Our grandson Conor is a survivor of neuroblastoma and Ellyn’s daughter was taken by DIPG brain cancer. We had a lot of visiting to do on the Hill. During the day, we walked from the Cannon to the Rayburn, back to the Cannon, then to the Rayburn again and on to the Russell and back to the Cannon, not to mention all the walking inside those huge buildings that house our Congressional offices.  For each word we uttered on behalf of medical research for childhood cancer, we must have spent a hundred steps walking from one place to another. By that afternoon, we all talked about our shoes and how much they hurt our feet. About a month later, I found this piece and then I realized how much Ellyn’s shoes must hurt her every day. This is dedicated to her and to other mothers who have had a child taken by cancer.