Vitamins for the Soul

Arthur stood in his kitchen at 2 AM, squeezing water from thawing spinach, his knuckles swollen from years he hadn't anticipated living. The divorce papers sat on the counter like another stranger he'd failed to impress. At forty-seven, he'd become the kind of man who bought vitamins in bulk—B-complex for energy he never felt, Vitamin D for a life spent indoors, Omega-3s for a heart that sometimes forgot its purpose.

The baseball card collection had been his father's passion. 1952 Topps, mint condition, stored in boxes Arthur now dragged between apartments like penance. "Your grandfather bore it all," his father had said during those last hospital months, liver-spotted hands clutching a Mickey Mantle rookie. "The Depression, the war, your mother's cancer. Men bear what they must." Arthur had nodded, though he'd never felt like much of a bear—more like something bears ate.

He dropped the spinach into the pan. Steam rose like ghost breath. Tomorrow he'd turn forty-eight, and all he had to show for it was this: a rented apartment, a son who called twice monthly, a body that required pharmaceutical assistance to function. The vitamins rattled in their containers—plastic promises of longevity he wasn't sure he wanted.

The phone rang. His son. "Dad, I found something when I was cleaning out Mom's house."

Arthur listened as the boy described a shoebox beneath the bed—letters Arthur had written but never sent, admissions of love and regret he'd been too cowardly to deliver. "She kept them," his son said quietly. "They're wrapped in rubber bands."

The spinach burned. Arthur turned off the stove, tears finally coming—grief and relief and something like healing, though he knew healing wasn't linear. Maybe it was like vitamins: you took them daily, not because they fixed everything, but because you were still here, still trying. Still bearing it, one day at a time.

He scraped the spinach into the bowl. Tomorrow, he'd buy fresh vitamins. Tomorrow, he'd call his son. Tomorrow, he'd finally be the man his father believed he could be—the one who could bear the weight of his own heart.