My children took me to a luxury five-star hotel in New York for the first time. We stayed all weekend, and as we checked out, my son smiled and said, “Thanks for everything, Mom,” leaving me staring at a bill I could never pay.

My children said they wanted to surprise me.
They said I deserved it.
That was how I ended up inside a luxury hotel for the first time in my life—one of those places where the floors gleam like mirrors and the air itself feels expensive.

They called it a “family weekend.” A thank-you, they said, for all the years I …