The Sphinx's Summer Riddle

Martha sat on her porch swing, peeling an orange whose scent transported her back seventy years to her grandfather's grove in Florida. The sticky juice on her fingers felt like holy communion with summers long past.

"Grandma, watch!" four-year-old Leo shouted from the pool, where his brother was teaching him to float. Martha's heart swelled with that particular bittersweet joy that only grandparents know—the pride of watching life continue, the ache of knowing she wouldn't see them become men.

Her daily vitamin bottle sat on the side table. Eighty-two years of pills and potions, and still she woke each morning grateful for the creak in her knees. Pain meant she was still here.

She thought of the sphinx moth that used to visit her grandfather's orange trees at dusk—how its furry body had hovered like a small miracle over the blossoms. Her father had called it "the riddle bug" because no one could explain how something so ugly in flight could be so beautiful when it landed.

Life was the sphinx's riddle, she decided. How could time move so slowly and so quickly simultaneously? How could her childhood teddy bear, which she'd buried in the garden when she was twelve, still feel more real than some people she'd known for decades?

That bear—a button-eyed creature she'd named "Bear" with the creativity of a six-year-old—had been her first confession booth. She'd told him everything: her fear of thunderstorms, her secret wish to be a writer, the way she cried when her mother's hair started turning gray.

"Grandma, are you crying?" little Maya asked, dripping pool water onto the porch.

Martha smiled. "Just happy tears, sweet pea. Just happy."

The orange sunset painted the sky in colors too vivid for youth to truly appreciate. She would tell them stories tonight—about the sphinx moth and the orange grove and the bear who listened better than anyone. Stories were her real vitamin, after all. The dose that kept her soul alive.