What the Sphinx Remembers

I never was a spy, though at twelve I certainly pretended to be. The summer of 1948, I'd crouch behind the rhododendrons with my binoculars, watching old Mr. Henderson feed his goldfish in the pond dominated by that weathered stone sphinx his wife had brought back from Egypt. What secrets could such a man possibly have? My imagination supplied plenty.

Then came the day my baseball — my treasured Willie Mays autograph, no less — sailed over the fence and landed with a splash. Gold scattered as orange and white fish scattered beneath the water's surface. I climbed over, expecting to be scolded.

Instead, Mr. Henderson handed me a towel. "The sphinx has been waiting sixty years for someone to ask her a real question," he said, his voice like dried leaves. "Riddles aren't about answers, son. They're about learning what matters enough to ask."

We sat on his bench every afternoon that summer. He told me about his wife, about the sphinx they'd purchased together, about how wisdom comes not from racing through life but from watching it swim in slow circles. Those fish taught me more about patience than any sermon ever could.

Now, at eighty-four, I sit on my own porch watching my great-granddaughter chase fireflies while my own goldfish — a descendant of one of Mr. Henderson's, passed down through three generations — swims in its bowl on the table beside me. Some days I feel like that sphinx, ancient and inscrutable, holding memories that grow more precious as they grow fewer.

"Great-Grandpa," Sophie asks, settling beside me, "what's the most important thing you've learned?"

I watch the fireflies blink against the deepening sky, tiny sparks of light in the vast dark. "That love, like memory, swims in circles," I say. "That what we leave behind isn't things, but the pieces of ourselves planted in others. Mr. Henderson, the sphinx, even that baseball — they're all still here, somewhere."

She considers this, then nods. "Like the fish."

"Exactly like the fish."

The sphinx, if she could speak, would approve.