The Last Vitamin

Margaret sat at her kitchen table, the morning sun streaming through lace curtains she'd inherited from her grandmother. At seventy-eight, mornings had become a sacred ritual. She arranged her morning pills — a daily vitamin her doctor insisted upon, though she secretly suspected they were more for the doctor's peace of mind than her health.

Her eyes wandered to the fraying cable-knit afghan draped across her favorite armchair. Martha had made it forty years ago, during one of her chemotherapy sessions. "Every stitch is a prayer," she'd said with that weak but determined smile. Martha had been her friend since kindergarten, two tomboys in pigtails climbing the same oak tree, sharing secret crushes on the same boys, eventually marrying brothers and becoming sisters-in-law.

The afghan's pattern was uneven in places where Martha's hands had trembled, but Margaret had never noticed until now. How strange that the imperfections had become her favorite parts.

Her grandson Tommy's baseball glove sat on the counter, broken in and smelling of leather and childhood dreams. He'd left it yesterday after their weekly backyard session. At twelve, Tommy still believed he could make the majors, and Margaret — who'd never understood America's pastime despite sixty years in this country — happily pitched wobbly balls to him anyway. "Nana, you throw like a grandpa," he'd laugh, and she'd feign offense while secretly marveling at how this child connected her to a country she'd once felt foreign in.

Martha had never liked baseball either. They'd sit in the stands during their sons' games, gossiping about neighbors and planning bridge clubs, barely watching the field. "Who invented this game?" Martha would whisper. "Grown men hitting a ball with a stick?" They'd both dissolve into giggles, earning annoyed glances from their husbands.

Martha was gone now five years. The vitamin sat on her tongue, bitter and persistent. Some days, Margaret forgot to take it. Some days, she remembered Martha's voice: "Take your vitamins, Marge, or how will you have energy to cause trouble?"

She swallowed the pill with lukewarm tea. What were vitamins, anyway? Small promises of longevity that couldn't possibly compensate for the hole Martha left behind. Yet she took them religiously, because that's what old friends did — they honored each other in small, stubborn ways.

Tommy would be back Saturday. Margaret picked up his baseball glove, tracing the worn leather with arthritic fingers. She'd practice her pitching. Maybe surprise him with a curveball. Martha would have laughed at that — Margaret, learning baseball at seventy-eight.

Some vitamins came in pills. Others came in the form of hand-knitted blankets, children's laughter, and the stubborn decision to keep living fully, even when part of your heart has gone quiet.

Margaret smiled and stood up. Time to cause some trouble.