The Season of Small Things

Margaret sat at her kitchen table, the morning sun streaming through the window she'd wiped clean so many times she'd lost count. At seventy-eight, she'd learned that mornings were for rituals, and her orange — peeled section by section, juice running down her fingers — was as essential as breathing.

Her grandfather had grown oranges in his backyard in Florida, the trees heavy with fruit that smelled like summer itself. She closed her eyes and could almost feel the rough bark under her small hands, could hear his voice explaining how patience made everything sweeter.

A soft meow brought her back. Barnaby, her ginger tabby, jumped onto the table with the grace that still embarrassed her own creaking knees. He'd appeared on her porch three years ago, a stray who decided he'd found his home. Margaret sometimes wondered who had rescued whom.

She opened the vitamin bottle with a practiced twist. Her daughter Sarah had bought them — the expensive ones with extra everything. "You need to stay strong, Mom," she'd said, not understanding that Margaret's strength had always come from something else.

The baseball on the windowsill caught her eye. Her husband's glove, leather worn smooth by decades of catch in the backyard, their son's first clumsy throws, their granddaughter's perfect form. Robert had been gone five years now, but the ball still held the echo of his laughter.

Barnaby batted at it, sending it rolling. Margaret retrieved it, holding the worn sphere. Funny how the smallest things carried the weight of a life — an orange that tasted like her grandfather's wisdom, a cat who reminded her love arrives unannounced, vitamins from a daughter who hadn't yet learned that some things can't be bottled, and a baseball that still smelled like her husband's hands.

She took her vitamin with the last of her orange, petted Barnaby's soft head, and whispered to the empty room, "I'm still here, Robert. Still playing catch."

The morning continued, another day in the season of small things that, somehow, added up to everything.