Rooted Mama

She stepped out onto the patio and walked past the unopened box holding the small fire pit she had purchased from Target many months before. Her first step onto the grass was nowhere near as monumental as the moment she laid down on the ground.

She wore blue leggings and a white cardigan printed with a floral arrangement indicative of spring, her belly button showing, her blonde hair with orange-red chunks cascading over the grass like a silhouette breathing fire into the fall air on this breezy morning.

This was her first day as a homeowner.

She had always said that when she owned a home, the first thing she would do was roll around the backyard, feeling the earth beneath her. The sense of being somewhere no one could make her leave or tell her what to do was a testament to how she had lived her life, her career as a writer giving her the freedom to live the life she wanted.

Her eyes closed, she felt at peace for the first time in a long time. Even with her eyes shut, she could see the colors of the leaves — orange, red, and yellow, like her hair — before she got up and swept them from her body.

Getting up felt like a whirlwind. The relaxation in her body being jolted back into movement made her almost fall over. She slipped her flip-flops back on and headed to the front of the house through the side gate to see if her mom or son needed any more help moving boxes in.

The stairs leading up to the front door creaked as if they had been waiting to tell her every story the house had ever held. Eddy, its new owner, had placed a welcome mat there that she purchased from the Dollar Tree when she got her dream apartment in late 2021, after losing housing due to the pandemic and ending up with her son, her cat, and herself stuck living in a small room in the back of her sister’s house in Connecticut for a year.

A long, stressful year.

When she lost her apartment due to rent increases, this mat went into a box to be stored away until she reached her dream of owning a house.

“Home Sweet Home” appeared in white letters in front of her like a dream come true.

She stepped into the living room filled with boxes and a small blue loveseat from Ikea that had acted both as a couch in the small basement apartment she had been living in for the last three years and as a scratching post for her cat. It seemed so tiny here, in this big room with giant windows letting in so much sunlight.

The boxes were hers, her son’s, her mom’s, and her cat’s, and they would be emptied for the first time in years, coming out of storage, finally ready to have a permanent spot.

Her crockpot stared up at her from the box as if it had been personally offended by years of neglect. She looked down at it and sighed. “All right,” she said, “I guess you’ve waited long enough. I know I have.”

She placed it gently on the kitchen counter. As she daydreamed about all the meals she would make with it — chili, lasagna, stew — she saw movement out the sliding glass doors that led to the patio.

A deer was in the yard, just like the ones she used to watch from the balcony of the apartment she never wanted to leave. For a moment, it felt less like a coincidence and more like a reminder that not everything from that life had been lost. She took a few quiet steps toward the glass doors and opened them carefully, but not quietly enough. The sound startled the majestic creature into the woods.

Eddy came inside, a big smile on her face, to see her child running in and out of the rooms screaming, “It’s mine!”

And he was right.

The amount of hard work Eddy had put into securing this house was all for him. She knew her life would not last forever, and she never wanted him to have to struggle for housing the way she had since the pandemic.

This house was his.

It was the place where he would grow taller, louder, safer. The place where his things would not have to be packed away in bins. The place where birthdays, snow days, late dinners, movie nights, and quiet mornings would belong to him. Eddy stood there watching him run, and for the first time, the future did not feel like something she had to chase.

It was here.