The Morning Ritual

Arthur stood at the kitchen counter, his hands steady as they had been for seventy-eight years. The knife sliced through the **orange** with a satisfying sound, releasing a burst of citrus that filled the small farmhouse kitchen — the same kitchen where Martha had stood for fifty-three years before him.

She'd taught him this ritual. Every morning, she'd said, a body needs its **vitamin** C to keep the winter colds at bay. He'd laughed then, young and invincible at thirty-two. Now, at eighty-one, he understood. The small things kept you going. The rituals anchored you when the world tried to float away.

He glanced out the window at the garden, now bare in late November. But in his mind, it was July again, and Martha was showing their granddaughter Emma how to harvest **spinach**. "Pick the outer leaves, sweetie," she'd said, her voice already raspy from the sickness that would take her too soon. "Let the heart keep growing. That's the secret to most things in life — even people."

Emma was twenty-eight now, expecting her first child. She'd called yesterday, asking for Martha's spinach recipe. Arthur had wept silently, a happiness that hurt.

He placed the orange segments into the old juicer — a wedding gift from 1963, still working. As he cranked the handle, golden liquid pulsed into the glass below. He'd add the spinach later. Martha had started that combination during her chemotherapy, when everything tasted like metal except this strange, sweet, grassy concoction.

"It's not about the vitamins, Artie," she'd whispered, holding his hand. "It's about refusing to let go. Even when your body fights you, you choose what you put in it. You choose joy."

He raised the glass to the empty chair across from him. The morning light caught the amber liquid, making it glow like a small sun.

"Still choosing, Martha," he said softly. "Still here."

Outside, a cardinal landed on the feeder, brilliant and impossible against the gray sky. Arthur watched it, juice glass in hand, feeling suddenly not alone at all. Some loves, he realized, didn't leave. They simply became part of the morning light, the taste of oranges, the quiet wisdom of growing things — the invisible vitamins that sustained a heart even after it had broken.