I found it at 12 years old.
Not a pirate chest. Not gold.
Just an old brown wooden box under my mother's bed in our small Lagos flat. The kind that creaks when you open it and smells like camphor + old secrets.
I was supposed to be sweeping. Instead I was snooping.
What's in that chest?
- Faded photos - My mother as a young girl, braids so long they touched her waist. Eyes full of dreams she never told me about. Dreams that Lagos dust and "hustle hard" killed slowly.
- Love letters - Not from my father. From a man named "Emeka" with handwriting that shook. Letters she never sent back. Letters that explained why her eyes went distant whenever highlife music played.
- Her old JAMB result - 280/400. She wanted to study Medicine. But her parents said "Marry early, don't waste money." So the chest became her university.
The chest didn't hold money. It held the woman she could have been.
That day I learned: Every mother has a chest. A locked place where her "what ifs" live. Where her 20-year-old self is still waiting, braids down, medicine book in hand.
I closed it quietly. Put the broom back. Never asked her.
Because some chests aren't meant to be opened. They're meant to be understood.
My Question: What's in the chest you found - or the chest you're still afraid to open?
Image is AI generated ✨