The Sphinx's Answer

Margaret sat in her worn armchair, Barnaby—the golden retriever who'd been her constant companion since Arthur passed—resting his head on her slippered feet. On the television, some program her grandchildren had insisted she watch played on, though she kept the volume low. Something about the **cable** connection being fuzzy, she mused, though really, her eyes just tired easily these days.

At eighty-two, Margaret had become something of a **sphinx** to her family. The grandkids called her Grandma Sphinx because she never gave straight answers to their questions about life, love, or which career to choose. Instead, she offered riddles.

"When you stop looking for happiness," she'd tell them, "you'll find it's been sitting in the garden all along."

Just yesterday, her grandson Michael had come over, looking hollowed out by his city job. He'd confessed he felt like a **zombie**, going through motions without feeling alive. Margaret had smiled, stirring a pot of soup.

"I had spinach growing in victory gardens during the war," she'd said, ladling soup into bowls. "Popeye made it famous, but my mother taught me the real secret. It wasn't the strength—that's nonsense. It was that spinach grows quickly, feeds many, and asks nothing but patience."

Barnaby shifted, sighing in his sleep. Margaret stroked his soft ears, remembering how Arthur had brought him home fifteen years ago, a pup with oversized paws and endless hope. They'd grown old together, the three of them, then just the two of them.

"You know," she'd told Michael, watching his eyes light up as he understood, "your grandfather used to say the same thing about love. It's not grand gestures or fireworks. It's the quiet daily things. The cable knit sweaters I mended. The spinach he ate even though he hated it, because I grew it. The dog who waits by the door."

Michael had stayed for hours, and left looking less like a zombie and more like his old self. He'd even asked for her spinach recipe.

The television flickered. Barnaby twitched in a dream. Margaret closed her eyes, grateful that the sphinx's riddle had never changed: love is simply showing up, again and again, in the smallest ways.