The Orange Jar on the Windowsill

Margaret smoothed the crochet blanket across her lap, her arthritic fingers moving with the practiced rhythm of seventy-eight years. On the windowsill, the glass jar caught the morning light—three perfect oranges, their skins dimpled like the back of her grandmother's hands.

"You still keep them in jars," said Evelyn, adjusting her glasses as she settled into the armchair opposite. They hadn't seen each other since the church bazaar last autumn, though they'd been friends since kindergarten, back when Eisenhower was president and everyone knew their neighbors.

"My grandmother swore it kept them fresh," Margaret replied. "And besides, it looks pretty."

Evelyn laughed, the same throaty chuckle that had echoed through their high school locker room. "Remember when we tried to sell vitamin drinks at that lemonade stand? Your mother made us add those awful orange tablets that turned everything bright yellow."

Margaret smiled. "We made exactly forty-three cents."

"But we felt like entrepreneurs."

They sat in companionable silence, watching dust motes dance in the sunlight. Margaret's thoughts drifted to her husband Harold, gone six years now. He'd always teased her about her orange collection—said she was preparing for scurvy or perhaps planning to open a fruit stand.

"Margaret?" Evelyn's voice was softer now. "I brought something for you."

From her purse, she produced a small amber bottle. Vitamin D3.

"The doctor said I need it for my bones," Evelyn continued, "but I bought two bottles. Thought maybe..."

Margaret understood immediately. This was how they'd always done things—sharing medicine, sharing grief, sharing the small indignities of aging. How many times over sixty years had one brought soup when the other was sick? How many times had they sat in hospital waiting rooms, holding hands like schoolgirls?

"Thank you," Margaret said, taking the bottle. "Harold would say I'm stockpiling again."

"He had a point," Evelyn teased gently. "Between your orange jar and now vitamins..."

"I'm just prepared. That's wisdom, Evelyn. You learn what matters."

"And what's that?"

Margaret looked at her friend of seven decades, at the wrinkles mapping laughter around her eyes, at the silver hair that had once been dark brown. "Not the oranges. Not the vitamins. It's the jar on the windowsill, waiting for someone to notice its beauty. It's the friend who stops by with unasked-for gifts because she knows. It's being kept alive by small, sweet things."

Evelyn reached across the space between their chairs and squeezed Margaret's hand.

"Well," she said, "then I suppose we're both very wealthy women."