After a long deliberation, I have decided to launch The Antelope Diaries. The site is named in honor of my daughter, Polina, which can almost be spelled antelope backwards. Hence, The Antelope Diaries. She was born in August of 2012 and is the best thing that has ever happened to me. When she smiles, my whole world lights up. When she cries, she stirs within me internal pain. She is my best teacher, despite our 38-year age difference. In many ways, she is more mature than I am (which will be the subject of an upcoming article). She can be funny and maddening. She brings out at different times, sometimes one after the other, my deepest love and deepest frustration. My favorite moments with her are when she smiles so broadly that her mouth opens to its outermost limits. When she smiles like that, it is pure, unadulterated joy. There is nothing like that in the adult-world. You would be put in a mental hospital if you smiled like that or felt that much joy. But with babies/toddlers, it’s an easy, beautiful state of affairs.
The blogs on this site are real-life experiences and historical facts I’m recording for my daughter and for myself, lest I forget. My audience is family, friends, and prospective readers, including my daughter, some day. This time passes so quickly. Only a year ago, when my daughter was six months old, I was waiting for something to happen. She seemed to be stuck in a time warp- nothing new was happening. Then several months later, she was crawling, then walking and six months after that, on September 28, she awoke from a four- hour nap and was visibly changed. She looked older, grew taller, and acted differently- more curious, more engaged. She had a look of maturity. She was no longer a baby, but transitioned to a toddler that day. My memories of toddler-hood are slowly pushing out my memories of her as a baby. As I write this, I vaguely remember my daughter being a newborn. I know it happened- I have pictures and video. But if not for video, I wouldn’t have any images- just the memory of a sensation. That’s how quickly time passes and how badly I remember. Part of the reason I decided to keep a diary is so I have something to refer to when I do forget.
I am starting this site not without some trepidation. I am at heart a private person. I don’t like sharing things about myself, but I love sharing and discussing ideas. That has been my internal debate prior to launching this site- do I really want to “put myself out there?” In the end, the desire (a deep desire, might I add) to connect as well as to share moments in time that I find enlightening won out over my fears. I still have fears, but the scale is tipped slightly in favor of sharing. So here I am.
A few facts about myself:
1. I am not on social media. I’m not on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, although I’m beginning to ponder the latter option because it seems cool for those moments when you feel tapped to the universe, experience what for you is a revelation, and have an ability to share it in 140 characters or less. I’ve been invited to join Facebook and LinkedIn, but that kind of online exposure makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not wildly thrilled about doing anything online, but at least with a website, I’m my own boss.
2. I am not a techie. That is part of the reason I put off posting to a website. I wasn’t confident I could put up a website by myself. Fortunately, it is proving not to be that difficult. (Hey! I really mean it here- if I can do it, you can do it!) Some other facts about me: I do not carry a cell phone, which in this day and age, in the city I live in, is an oddity. The cell phone I do have is a flip phone, which until recently was one I had for eight years or so. It worked fine until my daughter dropped it in a glass of water. My fault for leaving the two within reach of one another. I bought another flip phone from Verizon for $20. That was two weeks ago. So far, I haven’t used it. Generally I use a cell phone about four weeks out of the year when my husband or I am traveling.
3. I just turned 40 on March 1. I was almost 38 and a half when I had Polina. My husband for a long time never wanted to have children. Now that we have Polina, of course he loves her, but he didn’t envision being a father. It just wasn’t important to him. I didn’t even think about having children until I turned 30. If you asked me prior to that age if I wanted any, I would have answered no. When I turned 30, something clicked for me. I became curious about having children, which turned to a desire. At age 35, we started talking about it more seriously. When I was 37, we started playing the lottery that was conception. Polina was conceived five months later.
I put my age here because it’s important to understand that the vast majority of my life I have been single, a term I’m using to mean “without children.” My orientation is still from the perspective of a single person, even though I am now a mother. Of course I’ve had to change and adapt, but even in my adaptation, I often see things from the vantage point of a single person. It’s like being in a foreign country- I still remember the old “country.” Unlike most people, I remember a time before I became a parent. Most people, I would venture, have about 10 years between adulthood and parenthood, which in the grand scheme of things, is a small fraction of your life. My singleness was a big chunk of my life and it affects my outlook on parenthood. I think this is what makes this blog a bit different. I should also note that my husband is 48 and he became a dad at 46, making the majority of his life also single. I’m just noting this because I think it’s interesting.
4. I am a stay at home mother, a position I never thought I would be in. I always imagined myself as a career woman, but my career hasn’t turned out the way I expected. In fact, it has been the complete opposite of what I expected. I used to look down on women who stayed home to raise children. I had an air of superiority because I thought I was doing more with my life than washing dishes, laundry, and diapers. (Yes, I use cloth diapers.) How life has dealt me a blow. Well, it’s all for the better, because now I have A LOT of appreciation for mothers who do their jobs well. It’s not enough to give birth and call yourself a mother. It’s all the stuff that comes after it. Similar to a marriage being more than a wedding ceremony. It’s all the stuff that comes afterward. Motherhood takes a lot of skill, something I underestimated. I didn’t have too many skills at first, but now I’m doing it- making meals from scratch, baking my own bread and desserts, doing all the household chores and actually feeling good about it. Although my daughter is home with me, I feel like I could definitely be spending more time with her (a subject of a future article) because there is so much work to be done around the home. I can only imagine how people get their work done with more children. When you walk into a clean home with food on the table and there is a child running around, I guarantee you that if that person did that without someone else’s help, it was a lot of work. Looks simple, but it’s a lot of work. I feel blessed to be able to spend this time with my daughter. If I worked during the day, I’m not sure I would know her as well as I do now. I am loving this time in my life.
I will do my best to write a blog at least weekly. Now that I am online, it will give me pressure to write and I do write better under pressure. I’ve been a columnist for two papers and some of my best columns were written under pressure. Not being on a deadline gives me permission to put everything else first, particularly the never-ending chores. (I’ve got dishes in my sink right now and I could be doing the laundry while Polina is napping.) I have not mastered the art of the perfect stay-at-home mother, which I envision as someone from the 1950s America- dinner on the table at 6 pm, everything clean and tidy, with time for social engagements. Maybe when Polina is older I’ll be better at it, but I want and need to write now. So for better or for worse, please be patient with me as I juggle these two roles.
One final note: I began thinking about blogging before Polina was born. I began writing but never posting these articles. So, to avoid confusion, I am posting the date I wrote the blog next to the title, because the blogs will be published in some cases a year after they were written, and you may wonder why the age doesn’t match with the publication date, or how Polina can grow so rapidly in a short amount of time. That’s how, I tell you.
So, that’s all for now. If I need to update this introduction, I will. I’m sure I will at some point as this blog matures. I hope you enjoy what is a work in progress. Please provide feedback, if you are so inclined, in the comments or contact section.