Maybe my biggest dream, is to be a mother.

A mother with hands full of love and a heart still whole. A healthy mother. A caring mother. A loving mother.

I want to raise a child who comes to me when they’ve lost their sock or misplaced their book, not because I know where everything is, but because I am home. I want them to carry the smell of my cooking in their memory, the kind of meals that make them miss me in foreign countries and crowded dorm rooms.

I want to feel the gentle kick of life within me. A secret nudge from the universe saying, “Something beautiful is growing here.” I want to sing them to sleep with lullabies i make up in Hausa or broken English, lullabies stitched together with love and the rhythm of women before me.

I want to write them books with wild characters and brave girls so they know that their mother’s words stretched beyond nappies and night feeds. I want to draw their favorite animals, even if my lions look like goats and teach them how to paint what they feel and play the piano off-key but with joy. But more than that, I want to teach them how to ask questions about faith. To wonder, not fearfully, but curiously, about the One who made them. I want them to know that the Qur’an is not just something to memorize, but something to live. That its verses are not just words in Arabic, but a map for becoming kind, for seeking truth and a life of meaning.

The idea that another human might carry my eyes or their father’s smile, that my nose might sit on a face I didn’t draw, but helped make, warms my heart in ways I can’t fully name. That this child will be a living poem made of two people who once loved each other deeply enough to create a third.

I want to dress them in both Ankara and denim, beads in their hair or a tiny cap on their head, and buy them silly little toys that’ll get lost under the couch but stay etched in our stories.

I want to witness them ask life’s big questions. Why does the sun rise, Mama? Why does it set? Why does the ocean stop at the shore? And I’ll sit with them, maybe under a mango tree or on a verandah as the generator hums, and we’ll talk about Pluto, Charon, and how love can be found in the coldest, farthest corners of the galaxy.

I want to show them this world, its cracks yes but also its brilliance. That even here, even now, in a place that sometimes forgets women, forgets softness, forgets poetry, we still get to love loudly.

Because a mother’s heart, especially an African mother’s, is a quiet miracle. A place where pain is folded into strength and love is given generously, without measure. It is the universe of care, constantly open to the laughter and tears, the successes and failures of her child that expands infinitely.

It rejoices with the child as if every other victory were her own and shrouds him from suffering with strength that defies logic. These are the quiet acts of heroism that remain unsung but echo in every warm meal, every assuring hug, or an unspoken moment in prayer at night.

When the world becomes loud and unkind, I want to be their stillness. Their prayer. Their safe place.

To mother with tenderness, with courage, and with story. That just may be my biggest dream.