Weekly Photo Challenge: Change
The weekly Photo Challenge this week is: change:
It’s kind of spooky, because a big sign of change JUST popped up on my property. Today.
I knew the sign was coming up today from our realtor. I’ve known for over two months. It still is a shock.
But still, it seemed as if it came out of nowhere. No knock on the door. It just sprouted up like a mutant spring bulb.
To me, this is a big life changing event, selling one’s house. And to me, being Jewish, there are usually rituals associated with life changing events.
But trhere was no ceremony, no blessing for putting up a sign as in Judaism, when there is a blessing for putting up a mezzuzah on one’s door.
I just opened up my heavy, ancient oak door this morning to let my kid get on the schoolbus, and there it was. This to me is clearly a sign of change.
If you have ever sold your home, what were your feelings the first time you saw the sign on your lawn?
The Moving Blues
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
New State, New Life: Transplantednorth needs a new name
Thank, you, WordPress, for your latest daily prompt: All About Me.
It was the impetus that got me thinking: Once I move to Detroit, the name of my blog will be outdated.
When I started this blog about three years ago, I named it Transplantednorth because that’s how I felt. Even after nine years of moving from the New York Metro Area to Rochester, I still felt somewhat on the outside, still very much a transplant.
Now, (as we native New Yorkers say) whadaya know? Just as I’m feeling grounded and rooted, it’s time to move, to transplant, yet again! (Yay.)
So, this is where you come in. And you get to vote.
When I move, what shall I name my blog:
I’m waiting with bated breath for your vote OR other suggestions!
To Plant or to uproot? That is the question.
Brace yourselves, my dear blog devotees (mom, you already know)
but this blog is about to get a whole lot darker.
Scarier.
And that’s not even because Halloween is coming.
The universe has thrown my family a curve ball and the research facility where my husband works, the whole reason why we were plunked down in Rochester, is closing.
Once again, we are faced with the possibility of becoming
tranplants
The next few days and weeks will be hard. Getting transplanted has many implications, big and small, on almost every facet of one’s life.
Take my passion for gardening, for example.
For nearly 13 years, I have continually worked in the gardens around my house. I’ve battled invasive creeping ivy; clearing it out to create a shade garden of hosta and ferns and Solomon Seal in my back garden.
I had yews removed to create a perennial garden in one of the only truly sunny spots on our property. Over the years, I’ve planted peony, roses, lavender, and countless other varieties.
After over a decade, the garden is finally looking established.
And now, I guess I’ll have to leave it all behind.
So, faced with the very real possibility of moving. what do I do now with the crocus and tulip bulbs I bought
BEFORE?
Before we got the news that has pulled the rug out from my family’s feet?
Do I plant bulbs this fall that I may not get to see bloom in the spring?
I know that as my family faces the monumental “ifs” of moving, the subject of some stupid bulbs may seem – stupid. But at this point of the transplanting game, it’s about all I can handle.
About 11 years ago, in another event that changed EVERYONE’s lives forever, I had similar thoughts about bulbs.
We were all still reeling from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In October, the War on Terror had begun with strikes in Afghanistan. There were reports of anthrax being spread through the mail. Remember how everyone was stocking up on bottled water and duct tape in case of a dirty bomb? Or a bio weapon of mass destruction?
No one knew what was coming next.
That fall, I watched and listened to way too many grim reports from the media. It left me in a serious blue funk.
So, I planted bulbs. They gave me hope, they gave me some sense of control of what I could be certain of for the following spring.
So now, in this one miniscule detail in the mountain of details one faces on the prospect of moving, I’ve got two bags of bulbs.
I can plant them for either me, if we stay here, or the new owners of my house.
Or, I can give them away to friends for them to enjoy.
If you knew you wouldn’t be around the same town to see your garden in the spring, what would you do?
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Stacy Gittleman 