I started looking at them, one by one. I turned one over, and a strange feeling washed over me. I froze. In that moment, a massive realization hit me: those silly postcards were actually clues.
The Message in the Musings
Each card had a little handwritten note from her, a small message that I had always thought was just her “rambling grandma-isms.” They were cryptic, poetic sayings, like: “Not every door is locked just because it creaks,” and “You’ll never find truth where everyone agrees.” I used to think she was just being weirdly philosophical. But now, seeing them all together, I understood I was looking at something much deeper.
At first, the sequence of letters made no sense. It was just a jumble. Then, slowly and miraculously, a clear and important phrase began to emerge:
“LOOK IN THE CEDAR HOPE CHEST. BOTTOM.”
Finding the False Bottom
The cedar hope chest had been in her bedroom for my entire life. I had always imagined it was just full of old moth-eaten blankets and linens—the kind of things you put away and forget about. When she passed, I was a young, busy, college-bound “know-it-all,” and the chest hadn’t crossed my mind.
But now, here I was—a 37-year-old divorced single mom—standing in a dusty guest room, my heart racing as if I had suddenly found a treasure map. I knelt down by the chest, lifted the heavy lid, and was instantly greeted by the comforting scent of old wood and lavender sachets. I carefully pulled out the items inside: some hand-crocheted doilies, two embroidered pillowcases, and an old, faded quilt. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
But then, my eyes caught it: a tiny seam where the wood was slightly discolored. There was a false bottom.
It took me a few attempts to figure out how to gently pry it up without damaging the wood. Underneath the false layer, I found a worn, faded red folder holding a thick stack of papers. On the very top of the stack, there was a simple yellow sticky note in her familiar, unmistakable handwriting:
“Read these when you’re ready to know who I really was.”
The Confession in the Folder
I sank down onto the floor, cross-legged, with the mysterious folder in my lap. The first item was a small, black-and-white photograph. It showed my grandmother, much younger, probably in her twenties, standing in front of what looked like a train station. But she wasn’t alone. Standing right next to her was a man I had never, ever seen before. His arm was around her shoulder.
I stared at the image for a long time. My grandmother had always told me a clear story: she married young, had my father when she was 22, and was a widow by the age of 30. The man in this photo was clearly not my grandfather. He had a darker complexion, perhaps Indian or Middle Eastern, with penetrating eyes and a very confident way of standing.
I moved on to the next page. It was a letter, dated all the way back to 1962:
My dearest Zahra, If you are reading this, it means our daughter is safe. It means you found a way out. I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you. I hope she has your courage, your eyes. Tell her I loved her, even from afar. Always, A.
The word “Daughter?” echoed in my mind. My father was an only child. He didn’t have a sister.
But as I kept reading through the papers in the folder, an overwhelming, new truth began to form inside me. It felt like a slow and massive storm building up in my chest. I wasn’t reading about some distant cousin or a long-lost family member.
I was reading about me.
The woman I knew as Grandma Zahra hadn’t been my biological grandmother.
The postcards, the riddles, the mystery she had left behind—it wasn’t a strange, quirky game. It was her way of giving me the entire truth of my own origin story, handing it over piece by piece, only when she believed I was old enough to handle it.
