Relocating for a Spouse's Job

Rob and I had been married about 6 months or so when the first job offer came. His former boss was heading up some mega-project within their company and would Rob be interested. Interest meant opening the door to relocating our new family from Canada, where my daughter and I were in the initial stages of establishing legal residency back to the United States, specifically Houston. It also meant committing to several more moves over the next few years and living in the Middle East during the project's final stages.

At the time it seemed exciting, but as the logistics began to run up against our children, the whole family blending thing and the realities of what it means to be a married couple from different countries (love does not necessarily conquer immigrations rules), we took a pass on the offer.

And when I say "we", I mean both of us. Careers and their impact are not unilateral in our home.

The job offer has come up twice since then. Most recently Rob was greeted with an email inquiry upon our return from our recent holiday.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor," I said, paraphrasing one of my favorite Sondheim musicals.

I am big on signs and listening to the universe. And maybe it wasn't a coincidence that I had spent our holiday reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist in which the main character follows the signs that lead him on the journey to fulfill his personal legend.

Taking the job would mean leaving Canada for the U.K. and possibly to one more location before we would find ourselves in one of the those gated ex-pat communities in Saudi Arabia. We have an almost seven year old to uproot and two grown children who would be left behind. There is also the uncertainty in the economy, and the unknown of transition. And these are just the big things. There is a house to purge of possessions that can't be shipped and the house itself to be sold.

I have done this before. Moved to another country with a small child to start a new life and found in the process that I am far less rigid a person than I thought I was.

Last evening we watched a video depicting life in "The Kingdom" as the ex-pats there refer to it. The neighborhoods reminded me a little of the opening credits to the television show Weeds, little boxes on a man-made oasis.

Rob is pursuing the job offer. There are no guarantees he can secure a position because he is in the middle of long-term projects in the job he currently holds, but we both reasoned that his former boss would not have put the offer out there if there was no possibility of success.

I am reading a novel by Elizabeth Hays called Late Nights on the Air. In it the characters refer to taking a leap - whether in career or love - as "jumping". Strangely, that is what I have always called those leaps of faith where a person simply listens to the signs and follows them. A coincidence? I choose to think not. There is a reason why this opportunity keeps circling back around to us and it is time to discover why.

This is an original 50 Something Moms piece by Ann Bibby of anniegirl1138.