Grandmother's Riddle by the Pool

Every Sunday morning, I sit by the community pool now, just as she did. The water shimmers like liquid diamonds in the sunlight, and I wear her favorite hat - a faded straw number with a silk flower she'd rescued from a bargain bin decades ago.

The sphinx statue still guards the shallow end, its paint-chipped face holding the same enigmatic smile that fascinated me as a child. Grandma Ruth would perch on the lounge chair, her hat casting shadows over her knowing eyes, and she'd whisper that the sphinx asked us one true question: What matters most when time grows short?

She had her answers. The morning vitamin ritual that became our sacred routine - one for bones, one for heart, one for the wisdom that only arrives after seventy years. She'd line up her pill organizer like a soldier preparing for battle, though the enemy was simply mortality itself.

"Before my coffee," she'd say, with a wink that crinkled her paper-thin skin, "I'm nothing but a zombie, honey. Just shambling through until the caffeine brings the soul back online."

We'd laugh, her grandchildren and I, at this self-deprecation. But now, at seventy-eight, I understand. The zombie hours before dawn - those slow, creaking moments when knees protest and memories fog - they're not death's approach. They're simply life's gentle reminder that we're no longer rushing anywhere.

The hat holds her scent still: lavender and patience. The sphinx waits for my answer, as it waited for hers. The vitamins line up in my organizer now, small colored sentinels against the fading of strength.

And I've learned her answer to the riddle: We matter not because we remain young, but because we become sphinxes ourselves - creatures of accumulated wisdom and questions worth asking, guarding the pools where future generations will splash and wonder and grow old enough to understand that the zombie walk of morning is just life's way of saying stay, stay, the story isn't finished yet.