The dollar salary everyone congratulates me for, my mother still thinks is naira

My mother called me last week to ask if I have eaten. I said yes. She said okay, and then she said the thing that always breaks me small: 'Jide, I hope this your computer work is paying you well, because I don't want you to suffer in silence.'

I send her 20 percent of my salary every month. She thinks I earn in naira. She thinks the money is small. She doesn't know it is dollars. If she knew, she would calculate it, and then she would start worrying about why I am not buying land in Lekki yet.

Let me break it down. At ₦1,360 to one dollar, my monthly wire to her is enough to pay a teacher's salary for a year. She uses it for her shop, for church, for my cousin's school fees. She thinks I am managing. I let her think that. The truth is I cannot afford for her to know the truth. The day she knows, she will start asking questions I don't have answers to. Like why I am still renting in VI. Like why I have not married. Like why I am not 'serious' yet.

So I let her believe the lie. It is the only way I can keep being her son without becoming her project.