Where Roots Take Hold

The scent of damp earth and peat smoke clung to me, a familiar perfume that had followed me from Ketvergiai, through the winding roads of Ireland, and now, into the very marrow of my bones. It was a smell I’d once tried to scrub away, an invisible stain I feared would mark me as forever out of place. But here, in the small garden behind our little cottage, with my son, Leo, his face smudged with mud and wonder, I realized it was not a stain at all, but the very essence of who I was.

Leo was digging with a fierce concentration, his small hands, so much like mine had been, unearthing worms and pebbles with equal delight. He was four now, a whirlwind of questions and boundless energy, a boy born under a sky that was not the vast, star-dusted canvas of Lithuania, but a softer, mistier dome. Yet, he had my eyes, the deep, contemplative blue that seemed to hold a thousand unspoken stories. And sometimes, when he was quiet, lost in his own world of pretend, I saw a flicker of something else, a sensitivity that reminded me so much of myself at his age.

“Mamá,” he’d say, his voice a sweet lilt that was still tinged with the gentle cadence of my Lithuanian upbringing, “why is the grass so green here?”