Posts Tagged Under Laura-Lynne Powell
Old Ladies
A friend recently mentioned how grateful she was her husband enjoys the company of old women.
That pleases my friend because her own aging mother depends upon their company for her well being.
My friend is an only child and her mother’s sole link to the greater world. My friend and her husband include her mother on outings and have her over for dinner often.
I wondered how her husband came to be that way. We both know men who don’t enjoy the company of their mothers-in-law, or aging women in general including, in some cases, their own mothers.
By adminPecking Order
As the school year continues, I’m often reminded of the new place in the pecking order of parents I inhabit.
I once was perceived as a good mother, the positive force behind a popular and successful student and athlete. I had many friends among the other parents who waited outside elementary classroom doors at the end of the school day.
It was there I’d be handed invitations to neighborhood BBQs and teachers would seek me out to tutor a student who was falling behind. When my son graduated to middle school I suffered no pangs of sadness because I had another son entering kindergarten at the same time. The elementary school would remain in my family’s life.
By adminPrayers Answered
When my son celebrated his 13th birthday a few months ago, his birthmother, the teenager who gave him his life and then gave him to me, sent him a CD with her favorite song.
The band was Rascal Flatts and the song she wanted to share so badly that she had written all the lyrics down for him was, “My Wish.”
One line goes, “My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to … I hope you never look back, but you never forget, all the ones who love you in the place you left.”
By adminAppliances
The holidays are here so it must be time to buy a new appliance.
I say that because every holiday season seems to send me scurrying to Best Buy or Sears to replace some expensive but can’t-live-without-it item, like the dishwasher that just fell apart all over my kitchen floor.
Last year, it was the central heat and air conditioning unit that whirred and buzzed for a few days before shutting down altogether right before Christmas.
Temperatures in Sacramento where I live were dipping into the thirties and fourties at night and my kids complained they could see their breath. A contractor spent two days on the roof fiddling with the unit before he could determine how to fix it, which he managed to do the day before my mother arrived from Connecticut, and I hosted thirteen people for dinner.
By adminLife
I am a mother who writes.
I steal precious slices of time away from the demands of my life to practice my craft. Last week, I had planned for a rare two-hour writing session by plopping my six-year-old in front of the otherwise forbidden TV.
Just as my fingers had touched the keyboard, my eleven-year-old son tore breathlessly into the room. It was his turn to bring a snack to his sixth grade class. He had told me two weeks earlier, but I had forgotten.
I considered ignoring the matter altogether, but then I remembered the promise. I made it the last time it was our family’s turn to bring a snack. I had used it as an opportunity to create a “healthy” dish.
By adminLife
I am a mother who writes.
I steal precious slices of time away from the demands of my life to practice my craft.
Last week, I had planned for a rare two-hour writing session by plopping my six-year-old in front of the otherwise forbidden TV.Just as my fingers had touched the keyboard, my 11-year-old son tore breathlessly into the room. It was his turn to bring a snack to his sixth-grade class. He had told me two weeks earlier, but I had forgotten.
I considered ignoring the matter altogether, but then I remembered the promise. I made it the last time it was our family’s turn to bring snack. I had used it as an opportunity to create a “healthy” dish. I made cookies out of whole wheat flour and rice bran. The result was a platter of brown blobs that tasted like baseballs.
By adminNew Wardrobe
I went back to work when my oldest son was eight and my youngest three after eight years as a stay-at-home mom.
Returning to the workplace was scary but exciting, too, and I eagerly dusted off my favorite Jones of New York outfits and polished my classic black pumps that had been pushed to the back of my closet.
My children left good luck Mommy signs for me the morning I left the house to reclaim my place in the professional world.
By adminMotherhood After Abortion
At a recent gathering of friends, six of the seven of us mothers, a discussion began about pregnancy outside of marriage. While we agreed there would be little shame these days, we knew earlier generations of women had suffered terrible consequences from such unplanned pregnancies.
“Do any of you remember before abortion was legal?” asked the first grade teacher, a woman in her 50s. “Well, I remember. I knew girls who had coat-hanger abortions. It was awful.”
We shook our heads in sympathy and disgust. Just imagining what happens during a “coat-hanger abortion” made my skin crawl.
By admin
