moved

gael's picture gallery at:

http://gaelfernandez.multiply.com

goodbye

how do you end a blog?

i've had this blog since before gael was born.

i decided to put it up so i could tell gael what it was like while he was growing up. the blog documented gael's milestones and developments. how he progressed from one tiny baby to the very active little boy he currently is. most parents have photo albums and scrapbooks. since i'm at work most of the time, and since i'm almost always in front of a computer, i have a blog.

it started just like that. it also served as a way to inform and update his daddy, who is constantly away, of how we are. (although, daddy never really had the time to check the blog, he barely had access to the internet. i think he only checked the blog only once or twice since it was put up)

but as time passed, the blog became so much more.

this blog had been a repository of my thoughts, my experiences, my feelings. i wanted gael to know his mother more. that i am not just a mother, a parent, a wife, but a person, an individual. i can be happy, i can be sad. there are times when i'm excited. times when i'm mad. i shared every little detail because i want gael to know that mommy can be strong, but mommy is vulnerable too in so many ways. and that mommy is never perfect. mommy is just learning. and to forgive me if i oftentimes make lapses. parenthood and family life are things that mommy hasn't figured out how to maneuver just quite yet, they are learnings-in-progress.

recent developments have prompted me to stop the blog and delete all the past entries. some people, unknown to me, have been monitoring my blog and didn't like what they read, especially those that concerned your daddy's job. i was advised to delete only those that mentioned the type of work your daddy did and not abandon the whole blog per se. but you see, browsing thru the old entries, almost every entry contain a thing or two about daddy and his work. it was inevitable. his job was a big part of who we are. his job and our reactions to it, our adjustments to the demands of it, defined much of our family experience.

monday morning, like what i usually do when i arrive at the office, i turned my pc on and automatically typed babygael.blogspot.com on my internet explorer. only when blogger flashed a page that said the page can't be found did i really feel a sense of loss.

for more than a year, the blog was a confidante. it shared my joys, excitement, fears, questions, heartaches. it was a witness to the tremendous love i have for my husband and for my child. it was there while i discovered that sometimes, love in a marriage isn't enough, hard work has to be done, compromises have to be made, expectations have to be adjusted, faith in the Lord and in His promise has to be strengthened. it served as a support group, the people i've met thru the blog expressed concern over my heartaches and delight over my joy. in our country where there is no support group yet for the wives of the type of husband that i have, the blog connected me with many sympathetic people who listened, offered advises, and said their prayers for a young mother they barely know, for her husband, and for her child.

it's hard to say goodbye to the blog that has been so much a part of me. i've put so many effort into everything i wrote. i know i do not write as beautifully as an accomplished writer would, but still every entry was a piece of my heart jotted down in cyberspace. the blog was mommy kiel, every letter, space and punctuation mark were pure unadulterated expressions of how i was, how i felt, who i am.

i'll soon be replacing the blog with maybe just a photo documentation of gael growing up. i fear to write again about my feelings and our experiences because, as i've said, your daddy's job really defined much of how our lives are lived, and i know that if i write again, sooner or later, i will again begin to write about things that shouldn't be said in the open. i really hope that someday a support group will be formed for wives of my husband's profession. actually, i wrote about that in an earlier entry, how i wanted to form an NGO that will empower this kind of wives. it's something that i wish to still pursue, i would just have to push it back when i, myself, have become better adjusted and better empowered - the blind cannot lead the blind.

and so, goodbye blog. thank you for being a witness to how our family lived for the past year and a half. to the friends i've made, i am still just an email away.