The Sphinx's Last Riddle

Margaret always said the old stone sphinx in our garden was her spiritual advisor. 'He listens better than the priest,' she'd insist, pouring tea into the chipped cup she'd set beside the statue's paw. That was forty years ago, when we'd just bought this crumbling Victorian house and spent our weekends digging trenches for the telephone cable the previous owners had somehow forgotten.

Now the sphinx sits moss-covered beside the rosebushes, his stone face softened by decades of rain and Margaret's careful attention. Our grandson Liam built him a companion last summer—a pyramid of carefully stacked river stones from the creek behind the property. 'They're friends now,' Liam explained with the certainty only a seven-year-old possesses. 'The sphinx needed someone to guard, and pyramids need guarding.'

I'd sat on the back porch watching them, my arthritic hands wrapped around Margaret's favorite mug, thinking how strange it was that children understand what we spend lifetimes learning: everything connects.

'My teacher says sphinxes ask riddles,' Liam had said, patting the pyramid's rough stones. 'What riddle would you ask, Grandpa?'

I considered this, watching the afternoon light catch the weathered stone of Margaret's silent confidant. The answer came easier than I expected. 'The same riddle love asks all of us, I suppose. How do we build something that lasts after we're gone?'

Liam thought about this while adding another stone to his pyramid. 'You build it carefully,' he said finally. 'And you tell stories about it.'

This morning, I noticed that someone had placed a small stone heart atop the sphinx's head—Liam's work, no doubt. Margaret would have appreciated the gesture. She always said the answers to life's biggest questions are simpler than we make them.

She was right about that, just as she was about so many things. Including the sphinx's excellent listening skills.