Every birthday, my grandma gave me an old postcard—lighthouses, trains, and cryptic phrases like “Keep your map even when the road is straight.” By 17, I had 17 cards, tucked into a shoebox. A month later, she died. Twenty years passed: college, marriage, divorce. Clearing out my childhood home, I found those postcards again—this time in a mason jar.
Looking closer, I saw underlined letters scattered across each one. Written out in order, they spelled: LOOK IN THE CEDAR HOPE CHEST. BOTTOM. The chest at her bedside held blankets and doilies. Beneath them, I found a false bottom, a red folder, and a note: Read these when you’re ready to know who I really was.
Inside was a photo of her—young, pregnant, with a man I didn’t know—and letters revealing the truth. She wasn’t just my grandmother. She was my mother. She had fled Iran, lost the man she loved, and arranged for distant cousins in the U.S. to adopt me. Later, she became my nanny so she could stay close.
The postcards had been her coded way of saying: I’m here. Her final gift was a house in Oregon. Now I live there with my daughter, writing postcards of my own. Not secrets this time—just truths worth finding.