The Orange Season's Last Riddle

Evelyn sat on her back porch, the morning sun warming her spotted hands as she peeled the last orange from the tree her husband had planted forty-eight years ago. The citrus scent unlocked something in her chest—a particular kind of memory that only arrives through the nose.

"Grandma?" Seven-year-old Leo appeared in the doorway, still in his dinosaur pajamas. "Mom said you have a riddle for me."

She smiled, patting the wicker chair beside her. "Your grandfather taught me this one. Sit." She sectioned the orange and handed him half. "What stands still yet moves? Has feet but cannot walk? Endures everything yet speaks nothing?"

Leo's forehead crinkled. He ate the orange thoughtfully, juice sticky on his chin. "A sphinx?" he guessed finally.

"Close enough." Evelyn chuckled. "It's a tree. This tree, in fact. Your grandfather called it the bull-headed tree because it refused to die even through three droughts and that terrible winter of '87."

"Bear survived?" Leo asked, then caught himself. "Bare—barely survived?"

"Both." Evelyn's eyes twinkled. "Your grandfather was stubborn as a bull himself. Once he made up his mind about something—like marrying me, or planting this orange tree—there was no changing it. That's why the tree lived. He poured buckets of well water on it every single evening, even when his knees were so bad he could barely walk back to the house."

Leo fingered the orange rind, suddenly thoughtful. "Is that why you still have the tree? Because Grandpa was stubborn?"

"Partly." Evelyn looked out over the yard where her children and grandchildren would gather this afternoon for her eightieth birthday. "But mostly because stubbornness isn't always a flaw, Leo. Sometimes it's just love with its heels dug in. This tree isn't really about oranges anymore. It's about how some things—and some people—refuse to let go of what matters."

She squeezed his shoulder, the way her mother had squeezed hers countless times. "Your grandfather couldn't bear the thought of me walking out to an empty yard to peel my morning orange. So he made sure I never would."

Leo considered this, then grinned. "Like how you save me the biggest orange every time?"

"Exactly like that."

"Grandma?"

"Yes?"

"You're pretty stubborn too."

Evelyn laughed, and somewhere in the sound, Leo heard the sphinx's riddle answered: what endures everything yet speaks nothing is love—quiet, ordinary, bull-headed love that bears all things and refuses to die.

The orange season would end soon, but the tree would bloom again. Some stubbornnesses, she knew, were worth keeping.