I Wonder If Mother Had a Dream Too She never told me, not even once, what she wanted to be before she became “Mama.” Not when she tucked me in at night, not while she was folding the laundry with the same care she folded every part of her life, and not even in the silence we shared while cooking side by side. She never said if she once wanted to be a scientist, or a businesswoman, or maybe someone who traveled the world and left her name written across pages or places. But I wonder. I wonder not because I see her life as small, or because I think she ever resented it—no, not at all. She never looked at us like we were a burden. Not even on the hardest days. Her love was never loud, but it was certain. It lived in things like warm meals, clean clothes, the way she always made space for us in a world that often left her very little for herself. Still, I find myself asking, quietly, when the house is still: Did she ever dream of more? Did she once lie awake, imagining a future that didn’t revolve around anyone but herself? Did she ever picture a life that didn’t include early mornings making breakfast or the ache in her back from bending over laundry for hours? I don’t ask what would have happened if she hadn’t met my father. That’s not the point. This life they built together gave me everything. I’m not questioning it. I’m only wondering if there was a version of her that existed before all of this. A version with notebooks filled with plans or a heart set on something the world never gave her room to chase. She finished school. She was smart, capable, kind. The kind of woman who could’ve led companies or discovered something that changed the world. But life had other plans. Life handed her us—and she never hesitated. And maybe that’s what makes it so sacred. Because even if her dreams were folded away, she never let ours fall. She carried us, quietly and completely, so we could dream loudly, without fear. I’ll never know all the things she once hoped for. But I see now that her love was never the absence of dreams. It was the reshaping of them. And somehow, through the life she built, her dreams became mine. And I promise to carry them with care.
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