The 12 year itch

It's year 24 of my marriage...and time for what I like to call the 12  year itch.  It isn't an itch that can be soothed with any salve or ointment like you might use for poison ivy or  poison oak.  It can't be satisfied with a racy car or set of hair plugs like a middle age crisis possibly could.  It has nothing to do with wanting to replace a 40 something spouse  with a couple 20 somethings.  But it totally is about standing at the intersection of one phase of life and having to choose which direction to go as  we head into the next.

Twenty-four years ago, we had the first itch...the itch to be hitched.  We were just two stupid kids  who didn't know exactly what we were doing, but we knew we wanted to face the future together.  We didn't have a five year plan...we didn't even have a five month plan.  We just jumped in headlong and started scratching that itch.

At the 12 year mark of our marriage, we were nicely settled into a comfortable little life with three little children in a very little house.  It was, for the most part, everything we hoped for.  But then the itching started.

As the boys were getting bigger, the house felt smaller.  And while we were just an hour from our extended family, the separation somehow seemed larger with each passing year.  Our dreams just kept growing and growing...getting so big that our once comfortable little life didn't seem to fit us anymore.  

We were no longer the parents of small kids with small needs. And as our boys were growing older, we wanted them to be close to their grandparents...to go to a good school...to live in a safe neighborhood.  We wanted them to have both literal and figurative 'room to grow'.  

The urge to scratch that itch became overwhelming until we finally decided  to pull up stakes and make a whole new life for ourselves.  As our little children became big boys, we traded our little house for a bigger one.  We traded our big town lifestyle or a small town lifestyle.  We lost some things in the move...we grew apart from friends...we left a church we loved...I even gave up a job that paid far better twelve years ago than the one I have now pays today.

But scratching that itch brought us into a whole new life...a rich and rewarding life.  We've made a home here...the kind of home that lives inside us as much as we live inside it.  We've made new friends...friends we love like sisters and brothers.  We're closer to our families, both physically and otherwise.  And that job that doesn't pay so great in dollars and cents has  made me rich in so many other ways.  

 And yet, with all our blessings, too many to count, that itch has started up again. Oh, it isn't 'our' itch...if it were, we'd simply scratch it.  It's my husband's itch.  And it's an itch I'm hard pressed to want to scratch.  

With the boys now men...and daughters-in-law times two..and a grandbaby who has us over the moon, my husband is itching for a change.  A change of scenery...a change of direction...a change of monumental proportions.  Too many changes for my happily settled mind to fully wrap around.  

That free and fearless attitude of his makes me want to dig my heels in and prepare to be dragged by the very horse I once couldn't wait to hitch my wagon too.  Oh, don't misunderstand me, where he goes, I go.  Where you find him is where you'll always find me.  But that doesn't mean I'm thrilled about the prospect of 'starting over'...his words...his very scary words.

I realize there's some level of 'starting over' at this juncture in our lives...whether we stay in this house or downsize to something that better fits the new face of our family....whether we change careers or not...whether we like or not...whether we're ready or not.  I can't stop it.  I can't change it.  I know I have to bend or I'll break...I have to move or get run over.  I don't have the option to keep everything just as it has been.  Oh how I wish I knew how to cure that itch!

And while I don't know what our future holds...I don't know where we'll be tomorrow or next month or next year....while I don't know how much different our lives will be now that we're grandpa and mimi instead of mommy and daddy...while I can say very little with very much certainty, this I know...if in 12 years from now Dan and I are still breathing, that itch will be back...just in time for retirement.