This week is my husband’s final week in town. Next week begins his new beginning in Detroit but the beginning of my family’s long drawn out departure from Rochester as we yet again become transplants.

The sentence I have repeated hundreds of times to well-meaning family, friends, and acquaintances is finally here:

“Craig moves in March, I stay through June.”  ‘

March is tomorrow.

As the move to Detroit moves closer, uncertainty clogs my brain and there are daily reminders that we are leaving Rochester. We know what we have here, we don’t know what we are getting there. It’s that simple.

But then my nine-year-old taught me a valuable lesson. However small, finding one certainty, one thing that will be a known each day might make this whole transplant thing a bit easier.

On a drive to school the other day, my youngest declared he did not like his current room. It was boring.

And he might be right on this one. His room was never intended to be a kids’ bedroom but a spare guest bedroom. It remains the same since we moved in 13 years ago, way before he was a glimmer in our eye.

It is beige.  It is very plain.

But (AND PAY ATTENTION POTENTIAL HOME BUYERS) it is brightly lit, private, and has its own bathroom and a huge closet.

He continued to petition his case for a more exciting room in our future unknown home from the back seat.

“My room is really boring, mom, so I am excited to get a new room when we move that is NOT beige. And I want my room to be blue.”

“But there are so many kinds of blues, how will you know which one to pick?” I asked from the front seat.

“I don’t want aquamarine, or turquoise, or teal. Just original, plain blue. Like the blue in a Crayola box, the kind with only 8 crayons.”

And there you have it. One bit of certainty in this very uncertain time.

My son’s new room in our new house in our new town

will be

Blue