Riddles in the Garden

Margaret sat on her porch swing, Barnaby the orange tabby cat curled purring beside her, as he had for twelve years. At eighty-two, she'd learned that companionship comes in many forms.

Her granddaughter Lily burst through the garden gate, wearing makeup that made her look rather like a zombie from those television shows Margaret never quite understood. "Happy Halloween, Grandma!" Lily called, though it was barely September. "I'm practicing for the school play."

Margaret smiled gently. In her day, zombies hadn't existed outside of nightmares, but children's imaginations remained the same across generations—endless, wonderful, strange.

"Would you like an orange?" Lily asked, pulling a piece of fruit from her canvas bag. "Mr. Henderson's tree is overflowing this year."

"Thank you, dear." Margaret accepted the gift, its bright color warm against her palm. Oranges had been Arthur's favorite. Every Sunday for fifty-three years, he'd peeled one for each of them at breakfast, the citrus scent filling their small kitchen like sunshine.

Behind the rosebushes, the concrete sphinx statue Arthur had brought home from Egypt in 1965 watched silently. He'd been young then, a Navy man with wanderlust in his heart. They'd placed the sphinx together, he'd joked that it would guard their secrets and riddles.

"What are you thinking about?" Lily asked, settling beside her, the zombie makeup cracking around her smile.

"About riddles," Margaret said thoughtfully. "Your grandfather always said the sphinx asks the same question of everyone: What is the meaning of a life?"

Barnaby stretched, his cat eyes closing in contentment. Margaret stroked his soft fur.

"I think I finally have an answer," she continued. "It's the small things. Sunday breakfasts. Garden statues. Granddaughters who dress like the undead to bring you fruit. Love that outlasts you."

Lily rested her head on Margaret's shoulder. "That's not a riddle, Grandma. That's just wisdom."

"Perhaps," Margaret said, watching the autumn leaves drift across the lawn. "But wisdom is just the answer to the riddles we spend our whole lives trying to solve."

The sphinx seemed to nod in the golden light, keeping its ancient watch over another generation learning that some answers only come with time.