"Josiah, I need you to reset the circuit breaker," your mom calls to you from her bedroom upstairs.

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"Again?" you ask. This happens almost daily, and you're always the one made to venture into the cold, partly flooded basement.

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"Yes. Now, please," she requests.

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Collecting your boots from beside the front door, you head down the creaky, collapsing stairway into the basement. Locating the circuit breaker situated against the wall, you casually reset the switch, before returning upstairs.

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"Should be all set, mom," you yell, ensuring she can hear you. You take her silence as affirmation that the reset worked.

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Advancing toward the kitchen, you pause for a moment to gaze out the window. With the sun retreating over the rolling hills beyond the horizon, the sky is bathed in a pinkish-orange hue. Shadows gradually begin to shroud your fenced-in yard just below the window. There, you and your mom planted some tomatoes that will hopefully bloom in a few weeks, if her predictions are correct. She was so eager to finally have a garden, you remember. You even recall your own joy at hearing that all this—the house, the yard, the grass—were yours.

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For once, something belonged to you. Something real. Something true.

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A smile creeps across your face as you step away from the window.