The Summer of Riddles

Martha sat on her porch swing, the worn wood cradling her seventy-eight years with familiar comfort. In her lap rested an old **baseball**, its leather cracked like the hands that once gripped it—her grandfather's hands, rough and gentle as summer rain.

"You're staring at that sphinx again," called her grandson Leo, swinging his legs from the adjacent porch railing. The garden statue stood sentinel near the orange tree, its stone face eroded by decades but still holding that eternal, knowing smile.

"Your great-grandfather brought that **sphinx** home from Egypt," Martha said, her voice soft with memory. "1923. He used to say it held all the family secrets."

The summer of 1947, Martha had been twelve, standing waist-deep in the local swimming hole while her father taught her to float. 'Trust the water,' he'd said, his hands beneath her back. 'Like you trust life itself.' Now, watching Leo's strong young arms, she saw her father's ghost.

She remembered her grandfather's riddles: 'What has hands but cannot clap? A clock. What has a head but cannot think? That sphinx in the garden.' They'd sat in the orange grove, peeling the fruit, sticky juice running down their chins, while he spoke of Egypt and wisdom passed down through blood and time.

'Your **bear** needs a name,' Martha said now, noticing Leo clutching the old teddy bear she'd given him—a gift from her own grandmother, its fur matted with love and generations.

Leo shrugged. 'He's just Bear.' But Martha saw how he held it, the way her own children had, the way she once had. Some bonds need no names.

The sun began its descent, painting the sky in brilliant shades of her favorite color. Martha closed her eyes, feeling the weight of the baseball, hearing her grandfather's voice: 'Some things you hold with hands, some with heart.'

She opened her eyes to find Leo watching her, really seeing her.

'Grandma, tell me about Egypt again.'

Martha smiled. The sphinx waited, the bear kept watch, and somewhere between memory and now, between **swimming** through time and standing firm on solid ground, love lived on.