The Sphinx in the Garden

Martha stood by the garden pond, her palm weathered like the stones beneath her feet. At seventy-eight, she knew the rhythm of mornings — vitamin pills with breakfast, then the slow walk to where the sphinx statue had kept watch over her roses for forty years.

"Grandma, what's the riddle?" young Toby asked, dangling his bare feet above the goldfish that darted beneath lily pads. "You know, like the real sphinx asks."

Martha smiled, remembering how her own children had asked the same question in this very spot. The sphinx's stone face remained impassive, guarding secrets across three generations.

"The riddle isn't what you're given," Martha said, sitting beside him. "It's what you give back."

Her iPhone — a birthday gift from children who lived three states away — buzzed with photos of her new great-granddaughter. Martha still fumbled with the glass rectangle, but she cherished how it brought distant voices close.

Toby pulled his knees to his chest. "Mom says you were beautiful like Mom was."

Martha laughed softly. "We're all beautiful to someone who loves us. That's the real riddle solved."

She'd planted these roses the year her husband died. Each spring, the sphinx watched them return, more vibrant than before. Like wisdom, like love — some things only deepen with time.

"Grandma, teach me the vitamin song Grandma taught you."

Martha's mother had sung it, and hers before that — a simple melody about nourishment passed through women's hands.

"A for eyes that see tomorrow," Martha began, Toby joining in. "D for bones that stand in sorrow."

The goldfish rose to the surface, catching morning light. Someday, Toby would sit in this garden with his own grandchild, and the sphinx would still be watching, keeping the riddle alive.