Spotlight on Antique Mommy

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Antique Mommy is an articulate, talented writer. She is one of the wonderful contributors at our new sister site, 5 Minutes for Parenting. She named her blog Antique Mommy in reference to becoming a first-time mom to a miracle baby at age 44. Her posts, while often light-hearted and humorous, are thoughtful and genuine.

As she discusses in How Did This Happen?, Antique Mommy has faced the death of a spouse, battled cancer, and struggled with infertility. But she has also had many joys and blessings in her life to celebrate! It was difficult for me to select which posts to link to because there are so many gems on her blog.

Whether she’s sharing tender moments with her son, Sean, remembering old friends, discussing life lessons she wants to teach her son, sharing funny kid stories, or musing about the “mystique of older motherhood,” Antique Mommy’s sometimes sweet, sometimes tart posts encourage, amuse, and inspire. Her essay Scarred, for Life was featured in the July 2007 issue of Good Housekeeping. Sometimes Antique Daddy includes his wisdom and perspective as well.

I enjoyed reading Antique Mommy’s answers and encourage you to visit her blog if it’s not already on your blogroll!

You’re an entertaining and thought-provoking blogger and an excellent writer. How have you developed your writing gift?

Thanks so much for those kind words, Shauna! I can only credit that to the exercise of writing something every day. Usually some little thing will have happened that day or the day before that I’ll write about, but if not, I keep an idea file and I go to that file and randomly pick something and make myself write about it. Some of my best stuff has come from that forced exercise of writing.

What can you tell us about your design blog, Inspired Spaces? Do you draw upon your background in design and art in your parenting methods?

I started Inspired Spaces on a whim one cold winter morning, which is how I do almost everything, and it drives my husband crazy because he’s an analytical/planning/research/spreadsheet kind of guy. Before my son was born, I worked with builders to design and build high-end spec homes. I loved it, and it was just tremendous fun, but when Sean came along I wanted to focus solely on my son. I realized that winter morning that I really missed talking about home design, so I started Inspired Spaces. I had no idea when I started the site that so many people would be interested. Unfortunately, that site is kind of languishing at the moment. I had some server problems and then some other projects surfaced that I’m really excited about, so presently I have no “spare” time to give to it. I am hoping to get back to it before the summer is over.

Parenting methods! Ha! You ask that like I have some sort of well-thought-out plan and philosophy. I pretty much wing it every day and see what seems right at any given moment. What I do bring to my parenting from my art background is that Sean and I do something creative every day–paint, draw, make up stories, interpretive dance at Wal-Mart or sometimes we’ll just take off with a sack and see what we can find and make a found-object sculpture. You can’t wait for inspiration to find you, you have to look for it. Go find it! That’s what I’m hoping to teach him–how to actively “see” the world–it’s just so beautiful it makes my eyes hurt.

What are your greatest challenges as an antique mommy? What are the greatest advantages?

My greatest concern is always time and the fact that there is so precious little of it. Most women my age have already had 10 or 20 years with their children. I will always, always wish to have had more time with Sean. He is so funny and full of joy, he could light up the dark side of the moon. I worry about staying healthy and agile, mentally and physically. I want to be there for him into his adulthood. The only advantage to being ancient is maybe that I’m at a point in my life where I don’t have to worry about money; the material things of the world no longer hold much allure for me. I have what I want and I want what I have, so I’m content with my lot in life. I think a contented mommy is good for children and other living things.

You have dealt with several major difficulties and painful times in your life. How have you persevered and kept such a bright outlook?

I would like to say that I’ve always had a strong faith in God and that it saw me through the difficult times, but that would be false. The long and complicated journey through grief brought me back to my faith rather than my faith bringing me through the grief. I am struggling with how to address this question because to put the answer into a paragraph would be to make it seem simple and I think that might be a disservice to anyone who is reading this and suffering and struggling. Having said that, like most lives, I’ve been both tragically cursed and mightily blessed. If you look at my life in the whole, the blessings have far outnumbered the curses, and that is reason enough to see that life is indeed sweet and good and that every drop, bitter or sweet, is precious.

–written by contributor Shauna