The Beginning of Belonging

My kids run through the garage into the kitchen where I stand knee-deep in a pile of bubble wrap and halfway unpacked moving boxes. “Mom! There’s a snake in the driveway!” Their words tumble out faster than I can keep up, so I hurdle over the mess and out the door to see for myself.

“Ewwww!” I feel my whole body shiver as I make eye contact with the creature at the end of the driveway. I’ve hated snakes ever since watching that scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy has to trudge through piles and piles of snakes. Snakes. Of all the things we needed to deal with at our new house, why did it have to be snakes?

Snakes exist where I used to live in Illinois, but in my twenty years of living there, I never saw one in the wild, much less at my suburban house. Yet not even two weeks after moving to North Carolina, this one has the nerve to slither onto my driveway, way too close to the feet of my four kids.

“Don’t touch it! Get in the garage!” I yell before running back inside to grab my phone. They can hear the panic in my voice.

“Mom, it’s just a snake!” my older three remind me. “It’s so cool!”

They’re not worried (they also haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark yet), and they seem to have no fear, which is exactly what scares me.

That’s a copperhead, I think. Of course, it had to be a venomous snake. I shiver again, trying to shake the mental images of a snake crawling up my leg or biting my kids’ ankles out of my mind. I know I’m overreacting, but still, it’s creepy and definitely poisonous. We just need this monster to slink its way back into the woods.

I walk to the top of the driveway where I can get a good––yet safe––look at the beast sunning itself on my property. I text my husband a picture, download an animal identification app, and dial a wildlife removal service almost simultaneously. A woman answers the phone. “Well, we can come and remove it if you want,” she explains nonchalantly. Yes, yes I would like you to remove it, I think. But I hold my tongue. I’ve already confessed to her I am not from here, and I doubt any locals would call to remove a snake from their yard because, well, snakes live outside and this guy (or girl? How do you even tell?) is outside going along its merry way. She counsels me politely but directly. “Honestly, by the time we get there, it’ll probably be gone anyway.”

I put on my best brave voice and agree, “Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t need anyone to come. But, um, can you help me know what to look for, if there are signs of more snakes in my yard, if there’s a nest, how to know if there is a bigger issue?”

For months, I’ve had spreadsheets on my computer, notes on my phone, and a Google doc titled, “Charlotte Move Master Document” housing hours of research to help our family make the shift from Illinois to North Carolina. I have lists of churches, moving companies, pros and cons of different neighborhoods, projected expenses for furniture we might need to buy. But apparently, in all my planning, I forgot to include a section about snakes.

I do not feel prepared for this moment.

The wildlife specialist on the phone explains a few characteristics of copperheads. They can hide in piles of leaves or overgrown grass, and they simply want to find sources of food and shelter, so don’t make it too easy for them. She pauses to assure me they typically only bite if they feel threatened and then ends by saying, “You know, just one thing to pay attention to––if you ever notice mice in your home or mice droppings, just keep in mind that snakes like to eat mice, so sometimes that’s when you may have snakes coming closer to your home.”

Snakes and mice? Dear Lord, let it not be so.

Unbeknownst to me, while I’m on the phone, the snake squirmed its way further up my driveway, and I nearly step on it as I make my way back to my kids standing in the garage. I’m so startled that I jump what seems like eight feet in the air, waving my hands wildly in alarm, and when I feel my feet land on the concrete (and thankfully not the snake), I look around my cul-de-sac and pray none of my new neighbors witnessed the grown woman jumping like a banshee.

I hang up the phone and do what, at the time, seems to be the logical next step: I post about the dilemma on Instagram. I also text my Illinois friends that while North Carolina is great, we miss snake-less living. A few friends message me back that other snakes can be confused for copperheads, so maybe it wasn’t one, and I’m momentarily reassured––until I refer back to my photo, back to the animal identification app, and back to the expertise of all the herpetologists I could find on the internet in those few minutes, and the reassurance melts away. It was definitely a copperhead.

Standing with the kids, I’m tempted to declare that no one is going outside ever again. The end. But of course, that’s not realistic or wise for anyone––especially a mom in the summertime when the outdoors are a necessity for everyone’s sanity.

So what do I actually do?

I look down at the rest of the cul-de-sac again, this time wishing someone would see me. But it’s the middle of a workday, it’s 95 degrees with about 95 percent humidity, and there’s no one around. What would a true Carolinian do if this was in their driveway? Do I kill it? Do I leave it? Am I just being ridiculous? I want to talk to someone local, a neighbor or friend who can offer advice and answer my questions about this silly predicament. But I know no one. Other than Google or the wildlife professionals, at this moment, I have no one to ask.

****

“Hey Sarah!” I hear a voice as my kids clamber out of our minivan.

“Does anyone have the towels?” I call after them. My daughter returns to grab the stack then runs off again.

“Just wait for me!” I yell. They’re already standing at the gate, impatiently waiting for me to catch up and let them into the neighborhood pool using the key fob I have on my keychain.

“Hey Sarah!” I hear the voice again, although I still don’t answer. With a name as common as mine, I’m used to not answering when I hear it. I keep walking toward the gate, reminding my kids to slow down and wait for me. “Do you guys have your key fob yet?” I hear the same voice say. I look up and realize it’s my neighbor we’d met a few days ago who had told us how to get access to the pool.

“Oh, hi!” I reply with a smile, trying to sound upbeat and not at all overwhelmed by the new adventure of bringing four young kids to the pool by myself. “Yes, we just got it the other day.” We talk casually for a moment as my kids and I find a few empty chairs, and I attempt to shake the startled look off my face. I’d subconsciously gotten used to not knowing anyone and no one knowing me, and this interaction caught me off guard.

I’ve only moved a handful of times in my life. I’m used to deep roots and crave lifelong friendships, and I knew uprooting our family would come with challenges. Still, if you told me I’d cry after making my third wrong turn on the way home from the grocery store despite using GPS, I would have rolled my eyes. If you told me how stressed I’d be about finding time to get to the DMV or how fried my brain would feel after researching local painters, hair stylists, and pediatricians, I wouldn’t have believed you. After all, these days it’s so easy to google my questions and solve my problems with a few clicks of a button. This wasn’t that hard, and besides, no one forced us to move. This is what I wanted. It was good; I was good.

But I didn’t realize how lonely I was until I heard my name in the pool parking lot.

For weeks my emotions have hung out right on the surface, the slightest interaction easily setting off anger or sadness or overwhelm. This interaction triggered feelings of relief, and after our hour at the pool, I went home and cried. I’d never felt so relieved that someone knew my name and remembered who I was. Her small gesture of recognition and assistance in that moment felt like, well, as silly as it sounds, it felt like the beginning of belonging. I had someone to ask. I knew someone, at least a little bit, and she knew me.

***

When I started my freshman year of college, I remember an older student telling me, “Yeah, the first few months can be hard and strange, because after the excitement of student orientation and meeting everyone on your floor, it’s like everyone’s your friend. But at the same time, no one’s really your friend.”

Those words rang true for me with my college experience. For the first few months, I could say I had friends, but I wasn’t quite sure who was really my friend. Eventually, though, some of those people became real friends, and some of those real friends even became lifelong friends.

I want to rush ahead to the lifelong phase of friendship, the part where we’ll watch each others’ kids and go on vacations and have dinner together at the last minute, even when the house is a mess and leftovers are the only thing to eat. I know those kinds of relationships can’t happen with everyone, and they rarely happen overnight. But I want to do everything I can to outrun any feelings of loneliness that creep up at unexpected times. I have to remind myself that to feel connected and plant roots in a community, you have to start somewhere––with a handshake, a text, a “Hi, I don’t think I’ve met you yet” conversation.

The week before school starts, my daughter invites a couple friends over to play. They spend their afternoon making up dances to Taylor Swift songs and practicing cartwheels in her room. I still feel weary from the moving process and the chaos of summer, but overhearing my kids playing with neighborhood friends brings me a deep kind of joy and relief.

When my oldest three kids first met others their age, they acted like they hadn’t eaten for days, and someone finally gave them bread. They scarfed up the attention, the community, the fun, the connection. Nearly every day since, they’ve run around the neighborhood, playing kickball at one house, eating lunch at another, raiding someone else’s freezer for popsicles or ice cream. I can hardly keep up with meeting the parents as fast as they’re meeting other kids, but I’m trying. I hand out cards I’d created in Canva, listing our names and contact information, and my phone buzzes with text messages from parents introducing themselves, letting me know the names and ages of their kids, and inviting us to the pool, a block party, a birthday celebration.

My daughter and her two friends bound down the stairs. The sound of their footsteps signals they’re in search of another snack, and I grab chips from the pantry and make a mental note to restock so their friends want to keep coming over. The girls are swapping stories, and before long my daughter starts to regale the others about the copperhead. By now, it’s a bit of a “fishing story”, the snake growing in size and viciousness with each retelling. One of the girls responds, “Oh yeah, we had one of those under our couch once while we had a babysitter!”

“Under your couch!?” my daughter and I exclaim in unison.

“Yeah, someone left the door open by accident I guess. But we just called Mr. Dave, and he came and got it out.”

My daughter’s and my eyes widen at their matter-of-factness and the horror of a snake ending up inside their home. I say a silent prayer asking God to spare me from such suffering. But also, I feel relief rising in my chest once again. No one knows us well yet. That will take time. But at least we know people. At least there are others who know our names. And, heaven forbid if we ever have a snake near our home again, at least now, I know who to call.

Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, four kids, and loud rescue dog. She loves to cook but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. She is also the author of All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody, 2023). Find more writing and recipes to nourish your soul at sarahjhauser.com.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.