The Sunday Morning Riddle

Margaret stood at her bathroom mirror, running a brush through what remained of her hair—silver now, like her mother's had been at eighty. She remembered how her mother would sit at this same vanity, curling iron in hand, humming while Margaret watched and dreamed of the future.

"Grandma!" seven-year-old Leo burst through the door, swimsuit already on. "You promised! The cable guy said the swimming pool channel works now!"

Margaret smiled. Sunday mornings had changed since the grandchildren started coming over. No more quiet coffee with the crossword puzzle. Now there was splashing, questions, and that wonderful chaos of family.

"First your vitamin," she said, handing him the small chewable tablet. "Doctor's orders."

"You too, Grandma," he countered, holding out the bottle for her daily dose.

They swallowed their vitamins together—a ritual she'd started with her own children forty years ago. Some traditions carried forward like gentle waves on a shore.

The backyard pool had been her husband Arthur's pride and joy. He'd built it himself, mixing concrete until his back protested, installing the filtration system with the patience of a sphinx guarding ancient secrets. Now Arthur was gone, but the pool remained, gathering memories like moss on stone.

"Watch me!" Leo shouted, executing a clumsy cannonball.

Margaret's neighbor called from next door: "Margaret, did you see the new diving trick on the swimming show? Those boys remind me of you and Arthur at the lake club."

She hadn't thought about the lake club in years. They'd met at the Fourth of July swimming races, 1962. Arthur had offered to teach her the Australian crawl. Instead, they'd spent the afternoon talking about everything and nothing, wet hair plastered to their heads, hearts racing.

"Grandma, tell me the riddle again," Leo demanded, dripping pool water onto the deck.

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

"A person!" he crowed. "Crawling baby, walking grown-up, old person with a cane. Like you and your cane, Grandma!"

She'd told him the sphinx's riddle last summer, trying to explain growing up and growing old. He'd remembered.

Margaret's daughter appeared with coffee. "You're spoiling him, Mom."

"Someone has to," Margaret replied, watching her grandson practice his strokes. "Arthur always said children need spoiling and old people need remembering."

"He was right about most things."

"Almost everything," Margaret corrected gently. "Except that cable television was a passing fad."

They both laughed. Arthur had sworn cable TV would never last. Now her granddaughter worked in streaming media, and Leo wanted his own tablet.

"Grandma, will you teach me to dive properly?" Leo asked.

"Maybe next Sunday," she said, though they both knew she couldn't demonstrate anymore. Some things lived in the body's memory, even when the body forgot how to perform them. "For now, show me what you've learned."

He swam with the awkward determination of youth, while Margaret watched from her chair, hands clasped, heart full. This was what remained when the years stripped away ambition and distraction: swimming lessons and vitamins, hair turned silver, riddles shared across generations, and love that outlasted the body that carried it.

The sphinx had asked the riddle, but Margaret had lived the answer—through all its stages.