She looked at me, really looked at me, as if wanting desperately to burn what she was communicating onto my mind, for the great and significant truth of her message …
” … when the kids are grown (this is where her gaze was locked on me) … when it is just you and your husband again, it’s (she paused, staring off into the thoughts in her mind, her memory) … well it’s just fantastic.” Then she smiled and walked away, leaving me standing there, trying to absorb the deeper meaning, that I knew that must be there.
But, I didn’t stand there long, because this conversation happened about seventeen years ago. Our kids were ten, five and three. I had just returned to working outside of the home. Hubby had made a change from Youth ministry to lead pastor work. We had a house (mortgage included), boarders, family support on the other side of the continent … and we were not even in the busy years yet!
I had forgotten about that random moment, until recently … until I had slid, unannounced, into midlife, with a mostly empty nest, a different-than-planned lifestyle, inch-long hairs growing (overnight) on my chin and a body temperature gauge with a split personality.
Circumstances in life have been unpredictable … physical and emotional changes have been frustrating … relationships have been unpredictable.
Yet …
The circumstances, added to the emotional changes, the emptying nest and the experience of half a life of living, have forged a stronger, more confident and pleasant life together.
I think we reach this midlife stage and realize it’s time to poop or get off the pot! Crap or get off the can!
(Anyone else hearing that old song by the Clash? Should I Stay or Should I Go?)
Basically, we reach midlife and realize we are at a crossroads and we have to decide which of the two roads we will traverse.
Do we keep going, the same as always before?
– we may end up regretting a life of the same old thing
Do we take the other road, walking away from the path and the person on it?
– we may regret throwing those years away.
Or, do we recognize that we have someone beside us who we have been walking alongside of for so long, that we don’t know how much we don’t know about each other?
– this can be an opportunity for adventure.
To take that third option is to create a new path, a new road in the wilderness only to find out that … it’s fantastic.
Here’s the thing, taking a new path requires decision-making from both parties. One hauling the other along will not have the same effect as two individuals moving forward together. That said, whose to say that the unknown surprises along the path might birth excitement and anticipation in the one who gets hauled along by the other.
Though my memory for words when I am speaking forces me into an odd, verbal variation of charades … Though my partners in crime may forget what I just told him this morning … when the kids are grown … when it is just you and your husband again, it’s … well it’s just fantastic.
I we shall be telling this with a (contented) sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:Two three roads diverged in a wood, and I we —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
Robert Frost (and I 😉 )
itsawonderfilledlife 