The tiny house where I grew up is where I saw my mom come to life

In a little town overcrowded with cottage style houses and bikers who say “hello” as they speed by, I lived with my mom and brother in a tiny house on Spring Street. The cottage was set back from the road in my hometown of Davidson, North Carolina.

There was a gravel driveway and sloping yard that led to our very well used trampoline. The holly berry trees and hydrangea bushes in the front yard were my mom’s favorite. The house looked beautiful in every season, whether it was full and alive in spring or in the stillness of winter. Even in the coldest snow, the house emitted warmth.

When I was five years old, my parents divorced and moved away from each other. For a few years after this, we bounced around from different apartment complexes and random houses, renting them for only months at a time. After living uncomfortably for years, we finally settled down in this little house on Spring Street. For my mom, this meant she finally had a home she could make her own.

This house was one of the smallest places I had ever lived, but it always felt so cozy and welcoming inside. Maybe it was because my mom always kept candles lit, or maybe it was the way she draped colorful scarves on top of all of her lamps for that perfect lighting. And then there was the aroma of homemade spaghetti sauce and incense hanging in the air. Everyone who visited our home remarked on the warmth of our little bungalow.

In 2004, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. For the next nine years, she spent countless hours hooked up to an IV with chemo pumping through her veins. She had multiple surgeries to remove her tumors and she spent hours on end trying to occupy herself while they performed radiation treatments.

Even with the best doctors, the cancer persisted and spread. My mom had a spirit that didn’t give up for years, but the medicine and holistic remedies couldn’t fix her or save her from passing away in 2013.

I remember peeking into my mom’s room – the walls light blue because she liked to feel like she was in the clouds – and seeing her sitting upright on her yoga mat, hands on either knee silent in meditation. The lights were dimmed and her windows were open. She was at peace sitting quietly in her sacred space.

I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed moments like this. She brought life to our home, using its space for healing meditations or filling the room with the sound of Sheryl Crow and Dave Matthews. She hung crystals around the room at a length much too low for people over five feet tall and she let the spaghetti sauce bubble and simmer for hours on the stovetop so the house would smell good when my brother and I returned from school. My mom filled our house with her constant light and warmth despite the disease growing inside of her.

The house didn’t look like anything more than a ranch style cottage sitting back from the road, but it was everything to me. And that’s because this house meant everything to my mom. Before then, I had never experience a place so full of positivity and genuine comfort. I can still see her propping the doors open on a nice day, walking around with sage and dancing all the while.

This house was so much more than a roof and four walls. This house will always be the place I saw my mom come to life.