Livora Gracely

Every riddle borrowed a pair of wings.
Every answer landed somewhere unexpected.

Grandma insisted that riddles should never be read from a chair.

“They become too sensible,” she explained.

So every evening during the holidays, Grandpa wheeled the little reading lamp into the middle of the living room.

He called it the runway.

The grandchildren called it the spotlight.

Nobody bothered correcting either name.

Five grandchildren hurried onto the rug before the light was even switched on.

The oldest was seven.

The youngest was only three, although she claimed to be “almost four whenever the story becomes exciting.”

Grandma adjusted her large round glasses, opened a thick blue notebook, and smiled the mysterious smile that always meant someone was about to guess completely wrong.

“Ready?” she asked.

Five heads nodded.

Grandpa looked up briefly from his newspaper.

“I’ve already prepared my incorrect answer,” he announced.

“Excellent,” Grandma replied.

“We’ll need one.”

The children giggled.

Grandma cleared her throat.

“What has feathers but never flies, sings without a beak, and visits only after everyone begins imagining?”

Silence filled the room.

One little boy whispered, “A sleepy chicken.”

His sister shook her head.

“A pillow with ambitions.”

Another guessed, “A cloud wearing slippers.”

Grandpa lowered his newspaper just enough to contribute.

“It’s obviously my old hat.”

Nobody looked convinced.

Grandma pretended to think very seriously.

“Interesting,” she said.

“The hat has been trying very hard lately.”

The grandchildren laughed so loudly that even the family cat wandered in to investigate whether laughter had become part of dessert.

Grandma never hurried the answers.

She seemed to enjoy watching imagination stretch itself before reaching a conclusion.

Sometimes the wrong answers were more interesting than the right one.

Sometimes they quietly became next week’s riddles.

When the evening ended, Grandpa folded his newspaper and stood up.

“So…”

“Did anyone solve it?” asked the youngest.

Grandma closed the notebook gently.

“I think,” she said, “the best riddles aren’t the ones that find an answer.”

“They’re the ones that persuade a family to keep wondering together.”

Grandpa nodded toward the little circle of light still glowing on the carpet.

“No wonder,” he murmured.

“That spotlight hasn’t been lighting the room for months.”

“It’s been lighting the conversations.”