The day that Jailynn Dickerson closed on her house in Canton, Illinois, she and her mom picked up her grandmother. Once they were all in the car, Dickerson started filming on her phone.
“Grandma, I have a secret. I’m moving back to Canton,” Dickerson said in the video, smiling at the camera. Her grandmother, Susan Rilea, applauded from the back seat. Then, Dickerson revealed that she had already bought a house and suggested they drive by it. Rilea playfully scolded her daughter and granddaughter for keeping it a secret from her.
As they pulled up outside a white ranch house with green trim, Rilea realized what was happening.
“It’s my house? Are you kidding?” Rilea squealed as Dickerson and her mom laughed.
Rilea’s 21-year-old granddaughter had saved up to buy back the family home that Rilea had been forced to sell three years earlier.
When Dickerson was a child, her grandmother’s house was the place where she and her extended family always congregated.
“Every holiday was there, every birthday was there,” Dickerson said during a recent phone call. “It was, like, the center of the family, honestly.”
Her grandmother always went overboard with cooking and baking for these family celebrations, Dickerson recalled, and when the 900-square-foot house wasn’t big enough to fit all her guests, Rilea would set up tables in the garage.
“I had three girls, and then they had kids,” Rilea said. “We all just bumped butts together. We all had fun.”
For several years after her parents split up, Dickerson, along with her mother and brother, lived with Rilea, and Dickerson’s first memories are in the house. While her mom was working full-time and going to school, her grandmother helped raise her.
“That was my safe space — my grandma’s house,” Dickerson said.
Rilea, who loves to garden, planted irises, roses, pansies, hostas and lilies, and put Dickerson and her brother to work pulling weeds in the yard. Rilea was proud to own her own home and to offer a place to land for her daughters, grandchildren and aging mother, who lived with Rilea during the last few years of her life.
“If anybody needed something, they knew they could come there,” Rilea said.
Then in 2023, the nearly 80-year-old house needed repairs, and Rilea couldn’t afford to make them. She listed the house for sale, feeling a mixture of relief and heartache.
Dickerson was devastated. She wanted to buy it at the time, but she couldn’t afford to. So she decided, at just 18 years old, that she would buy it back someday.
She didn’t realize the opportunity would come so quickly.
For the past few years, Dickerson has lived about an hour from her family, saving up by working three jobs, at a Dunkin’, an Aldi and as a tattoo artist.
“I worked, like, 72 hours a week,” Dickerson said.
She knew she wanted to buy a house in Canton near her family, and though it was her dream to buy her grandmother’s former home, she didn’t expect it to be for sale again anytime soon. But when she started looking at houses online, it was among the first to pop up.
“I jumped right on it and viewed the house two days after that, got preapproved and was closing two weeks after,” Dickerson said. She kept her plan a secret until she had closed on the house.
“For about two months, I was ghosting my grandma because if I sat and talked to her, then I would get talking and spoil the surprise,” Dickerson said. Finally, on March 31, she picked up the keys and hatched a plot to film the moment she told her grandmother.
Dickerson and her mom both posted the video of the big reveal on social media soon after, knowing how much it would delight their friends and family. What they didn’t realize was how many strangers would be moved by it, too. After Dickerson posted the video on TikTok on April 10, more than 3 million people watched it.
“I’ve never been one to be on social media a lot,” Dickerson said. “We’re kind of just baffled right now.”
Dickerson is moving in over the next couple of weeks, painting the house and working on small repairs. Her first big family gathering will be a barbecue on the Fourth of July.
Rilea is looking forward to helping her granddaughter reinvigorate the garden.
“I haven’t told her yet, but I’m going to buy some flowers to plant,” Rilea said. “We’re going to all be back home.”
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