What Lightning Taught the Sphinx

The summer storm broke just as I settled onto my porch swing, bringing the kind of lightning that splits the sky open — the same kind that struck the night I met Martha, sixty-two years ago tomorrow. She'd been seeking shelter under the awning of O'Malley's Pharmacy, and something about the way the storm lit up her face made me forget I was heading anywhere else.

Now, Martha sleeps in the ground behind the oak tree, but Sphinx keeps watch over her memory. That's what I've called the garden statue since 1978, when the children asked what it was guarding. "Life's riddles," I told them, though back then, I thought I had most answers figured out.

Barnaby — my old tomcat with the dignity of pharaohs — curls at Sphinx's stone base, tail twitching at distant thunder. He knows what took me decades to understand: some questions aren't meant to be solved, only lived.

I was bull as a young man — the stubborn kind who wouldn't ask directions, literally and figuratively. Cost me my first business, that pride did. But watching my granddaughter Lily play padel last weekend, I saw something extraordinary. She'd just lost the championship point, and instead of storming off the court as I would've done at her age, she laughed, helped her opponent up, and said, "That was magnificent."

That's the wisdom Sphinx guards: not the accumulation of answers, but the grace of not needing them anymore. The lightning that once frightened me now brings comfort, a reminder that even the sky must release what it holds. Barnaby lifts his head as the rain begins, and together, the three of us — old man, cat, and stone keeper — watch the storm wash over another day, content with not knowing what comes next, only grateful for what has been.