Secrets are interesting.

Momma said it was bad to be nosy. Momma said that secrets must stay secrets, and you can't ask anyone about them. But Momma also says to tell her everything. She says we can't keep secrets from her.

So why does she keep secrets from us?

I used to think it was because she didn’t trust us. That she thought we’d break the truth the way you drop a glass and it shatters everywhere. I imagined secrets as fragile things, wrapped tight and hidden high on shelves we couldn’t reach.

But secrets aren’t fragile.

They’re heavy.

I figured that out the night I heard Momma crying in the laundry room. I was supposed to be asleep. The house was quiet in that way that only happens after everyone gives up pretending the day went fine. I followed the sound, barefoot, heart beating like I was doing something wrong just by knowing.

She didn’t see me at first. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the dryer, holding one of Dad’s old shirts. The light was off. Only the hallway glow reached her face, and it made her look smaller somehow. Older, too.

I didn’t ask what was wrong. Momma said asking about secrets was bad.

So I just stood there.

After a minute, she noticed me. She wiped her face fast, like tears were mistakes she could erase.
“Baby,” she said, voice steady but thin. “You should be in bed.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

She nodded. Adults do that when they don’t want to argue with the truth.

I sat down next to her. She didn’t tell me to leave.

We stayed like that for a while, listening to the dryer thump, thump, thump. Finally, she sighed—the kind that feels like it comes from deep inside your bones.

“Some things,” she said slowly, “are not secrets because they’re bad. They’re secrets because they’re unfinished.”

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t interrupt. I was learning that silence was sometimes the right way to listen.

She went on. “When you’re grown, you’ll carry things you don’t have answers for yet. And until you do, you hold them close. Not to hide them. Just… to keep them from hurting other people.”

I looked at the shirt in her hands. “Does it hurt you?”

She smiled, small and tired. “Sometimes.”

“Then why don’t you tell someone?”

She looked at me then—really looked. Her eyes softened, and something like guilt passed through them.
“I am,” she said.

That was when I understood.

Momma didn’t keep secrets because she believed in secrets.
She kept them because she believed in timing.
In growth.
In letting children stay children a little longer.

The next morning, she made pancakes like nothing had happened. She asked me about school and reminded me to brush my teeth. The world went on.

But something had changed.

I stopped thinking of secrets as locked doors. I started thinking of them as rooms under construction. Some doors open later. Some never need to.

Years from now, I know I’ll keep secrets too. Not the sharp ones. Not the dangerous ones. But the unfinished ones—the stories still becoming themselves.

And when someone smaller than me asks why, I’ll remember that night in the laundry room.

I’ll remember that love isn’t always telling everything.

Sometimes, love is carrying the weight quietly
until someone else is strong enough to help.