Before you know it the holidays will be here. That doesn't mean buying toys for our kids. This tells us it's nearly time to buy new appliances for our house. They love to stop working at just about the same time that the holidays are breaking our bank accounts. 

Instead of Toys R Us I'm 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 30s and 40s 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 13 people for dinner.

The worst example is from our first Thanksgiving in Sacramento. That’s when we were hosting my husband’s family for dinner and our one and only toilet backed up so badly a hole was blown in the pipe that led to the city’s sewer line in the street. The pressure had built up so much that when the pipe burst it sent the, uh, debris that had been flushed down our toilet high into the air creating a geyser of, uh, stuff in my front yard. My husband and I watched in horror from our living room window. Finally, he turned to me and said, “We could laugh about this or we could cry about this.”

We laughed until tears poured down our faces.

Determined to break this expensive albeit memorable tradition, I tried over the last several weeks to ignore the dishwasher’s decline. First, the front cover broke off, revealing a wall of tubes and wires. Then the control panel worked itself loose and dangled precariously above the floor remaining connected only by a slim handful of wires. A friend who visited recently gawked, “What is wrong with your kitchen?” When my husband insisted I face the undeniable fact that this holiday season would not be the one to end the cycle of poorly-timed appliance breakdown, I resisted. The dishwasher still worked, I reminded him, and suggested he duct tape both panels back onto the front of the dishwasher.

The dishwasher has since stopped working. I’ve been scrubbing dishes by hand for a week and somehow have avoided admitting to my husband that I was wrong. Nonetheless he wisely disappeared for a few hours over the weekend and returned with an early Christmas present.

The new dishwasher will be delivered tomorrow.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: appliances, Best Buys, Christmas, contractor, dishwasher, holidays, Laura-Lynne Powell, refrigerator, scrubbing dishes, Sears, Thanksgiving

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I was on a walk the other day, my every step pounding frustration into the pavement.

“How am I supposed to get this all done,” I whined to myself. It was a typical mother’s complaint towards the end of a typically busy week. How am I supposed to keep the house clean, the refrigerator filled, the children supervised?

I work outside the home. I’m active at my church and volunteer at my children’s school. I help out neighbors and friends who need me. There just isn’t enough time for it all.

Shouldn’t my husband be doing more? Shouldn’t my children be more appreciative? With every step my anger towards the people I loved most grew.

My daily walk led me to a tiny grove of redwoods. I plopped onto a wooden bench built a year ago in memory of an elderly neighbor who had died. I noticed a pot of flowers had been placed next to the bench. A card was tucked within clusters of tiny orange blossoms. I reached for it, a moment’s distraction from the building tension inside my head.

“My Darling,” the note began. The handwriting was jerky, that of an elderly author who had long since lost the smooth stroke of youth. I was reading a love letter, I surmised, left to the woman memorialized by the bench.

“Now, I am but a moth – burnt by the moon. I am lost without you.” I gasped, caught off guard by the plaintive tribute. I was eavesdropping on a stranger’s grief but felt compelled to keep reading. “I will always love what you have loved,” the note continued. The signature read only: “Forever + ever.”

I imagined the author and his love in earlier times. Had they met when they were young like my husband and I? Had they walked these very streets, sometimes hand-in-hand; at other times alone and angry as I had on this day? Had he witnessed her decline? Whispered goodbye in her ear?

I returned the note to its place between the flowers realizing the tribute to lost love was also a tribute to what I had now: A happy marriage to the love of my life, two beautiful children I adore and a cheerful home in a welcoming community.

The note was also a reminder that what I have now won’t always be mine. I will lose my loved ones one day or they will lose me. It’s the way of things, inevitable. So how was I spending this precious morning? Angry that my sons hadn’t emptied the dishwasher? Complaining that my husband took me for granted?

I resumed my walk feeling solemn and softened by my peek into a stranger’s life. I felt grateful, too, appreciative of the lesson he had taught. Live today. Love today. It’s all I have.

I decided to cut short my walk and turned toward home. I had kids to hug and a husband to kiss.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: appreciation, bench, children's school volunteer, Laura-Lynne Powell

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Growing up, I knew two things: My mother loved her four children. And she hated the ancillary jobs that came with raising us.

My mother detested housework and considered cooking an unpleasant necessity to be gotten over with as quickly as possible.

For Thanksgiving when I was thirteen, she presented a pre-cooked turkey roll she had purchased at the grocery store. My mother’s pride in finding a shortcut to the burden of preparing a holiday feast wasn’t diminished in the least by my father’s complaint that it didn’t look like any turkey he'd ever eaten. She placed the steaming tube of poultry concentrate on the table with a “tah-dah!” next to the cranberry sauce that still showed rings from the can from which it had emerged.

I never heard my mother call herself or any other woman a housewife. When someone else described her that way once her face turned stony. Later she hissed to us: “I am not married to my house.”

I'm not married to my house either. But unlike my mother, I work outside the home so I guess that technically spares me from the unfortunate title that often haunted her. Still, the house has to be cleaned and the meals made. And, like my mother, I detest housework and despise cooking.

It's a distressing dilemma because I want to raise my two sons in a spotless home and I enjoy as well as anyone a tasty, healthy meal. My husband helps, but frankly his standards are a little, well, relaxed.

So I clean. I wipe down the kitchen counters grudgingly and announce in sarcastic joy how much I LOVE spending Saturday mornings scrubbing toilets.

And I cook. But I disappoint even my own low expectations with my heartless creations. There are, after all, just so many crock pot concoctions you can pour over rice.

I wish there was someone to help. Someone beyond the cleaning service lady who visits a few hours a month for whom I have to pick up so much that I might as well do the scrubbing myself.
Someone different. Someone devoted. Someone who really LIKES to clean. Someone who considers cooking -- every meal, three times a day -- an opportunity for creative expression.
Someone like the woman we once assumed the housewife to be.

As far as I can see -- she doesn't exist. She didn't live within my mother and to tell the truth, I never missed that.

My mother was an artist, a painter and photographer. She traveled, too, and cared for orphans alongside Mother Theresa in India and took me on a safari in Kenya. She gave me gifts she might not have to give had she been the housewife of my fantasies. I, too, have gifts my family enjoys.

Still, every now and then, especially when faced with a bathroom floor that needs mopping and the knowledge that even the space behind the toilet has to be scrubbed, the fantasy returns. And I wish someone would give me one more gift.

The gift of my very own housewife.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: cleaning, four children, Laura-Lynne Powell, mothers, working mother

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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 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. My son returned home that evening humiliated. He begged me to make “normal” cookies next time it was our turn.

And I promised I would.

Now it was time to make good on the promise. And it was also time to write. So I did both, moving from the computer to the kitchen counter. Later, as the cookies cooled and my attention had moved fully to the essay I was writing, my six-year-old plopped into the chair next to my desk. He sighed, signaling he had something on his mind. “What?” I yelled, angry at yet another interruption. “Mom?” he said, with a quiver in his chin. “What does ‘dead’ mean?”

My fingers froze above the keyboard. I turned toward my son and saw in his face a child’s curiosity – and a little worry. I smiled to myself, clicked off the computer and surrendered.

Sometimes you have to stop writing about life and just live it.

by Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: Laura-Lynne Powell, sons, The Writing Mamas

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When we got a puppy a few years ago, my friend, Mary, scolded me.

“Just what you need. Another thing to take care of,” she said shaking her head.

Mary had heard too many complaints about my frantic life as a busy mother – caring for two active boys, keeping house, maintaining a job outside the home, volunteering for various charities.

She was right, of course. As soon as the puppy passed through the doorway it was as if another toddler had been set loose and my workload increased exponentially.

So what was I thinking a few months back when I agreed to allow a Japanese foreign exchange student to live with us? I wasn’t thinking is the short answer.

I hadn’t considered that I’d be traveling back and forth to three schools instead of two. I wasn’t thinking the teenage girl would need shoes, underwear, a coat, and gloves, and that I’d have to guide her through the mystifying process of shopping in an American mall as she hunted for a dress for her first formal dance.

I was unprepared for the challenge her spotty English and my non-existent Japanese posed forcing us to struggle through conversations until I understood that she suffered period cramps and needed a couple of ibuprofen.

I was unprepared for dealing with the sorrows of another mother’s child, yet, when homesickness drew tears -- I instinctively pulled her toward me and held her until the weeping subsided.

I was even more surprised by the extent to which cultural barriers prevented us from understanding even the most simple of requests. She had been living with us for more than a month before we understood why she declined our offers for a ride to the mall or to the movies.

It wasn’t until a neighbor with family in Japan told us that eagerness was considered impolite there and our student had probably been trained to decline three times before accepting. I shook my head in sorrow at all the times we left her behind while we shopped.

After five months, Emi will soon be leaving us. She’ll be spending the second half of her ten-month American visit with another Sacramento family. As she prepares to go, I remind myself that my life will get easier. But that reminder doesn’t begin to fill the empty place I know will be there when she goes.

All I really think about is how much I’m going to miss her – her accented English, her laughter at our attempts to run a rice cooker, even her tears.

I can’t stop her from leaving. She doesn’t belong to me. Yet, I can take from her time with us the lesson that sometimes the hardest additions to life end up being the most rewarding.

I do, after all, love that damn dog.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: family, foreign student, Laura-Lynne Powell

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At the salon where I've been having my hair cut and colored every two months for the past six years, the conversation among the women styling and being styled often turns to our children. As layers were being snipped into my newly highlighted hair recently, I asked my stylist, Sheri, how her daughter was enjoying her first year at UC Davis.
  

Sheri's sigh indicated things might not be going as well as they usually did for this gem of a girl who had graduated with honors from an all-girl Catholic high school a few months earlier.

Sheri explained that she had noticed on her phone bill a huge increase in the number of text messages her daughter was sending and receiving since going away to college, many of them sent in the middle of the night. When Sheri asked her about it, her daughter explained she had "met" a boy on the Internet and the two were enjoying a friendship via e-mail and text messages.

Sheri asked if she was able to do her schoolwork while up all night "chatting" and her daughter begged for her trust. Sheri did have faith in her daughter. She had earned it by being an honest girl and a conscientious student.

But something didn't seem right about the amount of time her daughter was spending on a boy she had never met. So Sheri asked more about him, and her daughter told her not to worry because a friend had promised that he was a good guy.

When the next phone bill confirmed the "relationship" was not only continuing, but intensifying, and her daughter's grades had begun to fall, Sheri confronted her again. If the boy's intentions were good there'd be nothing to fear if Sheri investigated a little. Sheri's daughter reluctantly agreed if only to show her mother that she was wrong.
 

But Sheri was right.
  

She learned the photograph the boy had sent of himself belonged to a star athlete at Penn State whose image was all over the Web and whose real name was not the one given to her daughter.
  

When Sheri called the numbers from which the boy had sent the text messages she reached a phone belonging to a girl who had renewed a friendship with her daughter through her My Space page – the same girl who had vouched for the boy.
  

Through Sheri's investigation her daughter learned that it was the girl who was on the other end of the messages, taunting her into believing she was involved in a real affair, a relationship that had become the focus of all her energies and emotions.

The girl, who was still in high school, had created this elaborate hoax to humiliate Sheri's daughter, though they never found out why. What Sheri did learn was that the girl had done this to six others, going so far as to arrange a date with one girl who flew across the country only to be "stood up" by the boy at an airport very far from her home.

Sheri's daughter was hurt and embarrassed, her mother explained with a sad sigh. But she had learned a lot about the dangers of the Internet and she was grateful the ruse had come to an end.

"What she's grateful for," I told Sheri, as other clients in the salon listened and nodded, "is that you are her mother and you trusted your instincts."

By Laura-Lynne Powell 

Labels: Cyber Maniac, Laura-Lynne Powell, Mother's Instincts

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The preschool that my sons attended succeeded, I think, because teachers there kept their message simple. The children could pretty much do what they wanted as long as they were safe, kind and clean.

Those three words became an easy way to explain, without lecturing, when a child's behavior had become unacceptable – either it was dangerous, messy or hurtful. My sons are older now, one in grade school, the other in high school, but I still need simple words to explain a lot of what they face in the world. The current economic crisis, for example, that fuels doom-and-gloom speculation by talking heads on TV and screaming headlines in the newspaper has not escaped their notice.

When they ask me what is happening, I hear the fear in their voices. I'm afraid, too. But how to explain the complicated, convoluted series of events that has brought our country perilously close to collapse when so many adults themselves don't understand?

I think back to the preschool and consider simple phrases that explain how we got here and finally settle on one word: greed.

Greed seems to be at the heart of every level of the debacle that has brought us to this point.

Greed pushed housing prices to record levels forcing families to pay too large a percentage of their income for a slice of the American dream.

Greed blinded buyers who purchased homes larger and more expensive than they could afford.

Greed motivated mortgage brokers and banks to make – encourage even -- so many risky loans.

Greed fueled a market system that allowed the sale of assets backed by mortgages inflated beyond the declining value of those homes.

Greed even seems to explain the posturing going on right now in Washington, D.C. where two presidential candidates – neither elected yet – have allowed their campaigns to further complicate efforts to resolve the crisis.

Greed is a word my sons understand.

They've been guilty of a little greed in their short lives and so have I. So when we criticize the system, I tell them, we have to accept some of that criticism ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes, though, just like the kids did at the preschool years ago. Maybe next time we'll chose to play in a way that is safe, kind and clean. 

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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This was the worst Mother's Day ever.

No gifts from my kids. No card from my husband. No break from routine.

The house was a mess and no one else wanted to help so I spent the morning scrubbing toilets and folding load after load of laundry.

Just like any other Sunday.

But it wasn't any other Sunday. This one was supposed to be special.

My husband wanted to rebuild the backyard fence so he spent the day in the yard cheerfully oblivious to my disappointment. I did my part, though, to guarantee the day's failure. I yelled at my kids when they refused to do their chores. I huffed at my husband when he sauntered through the kitchen ignoring the piles of dirty dishes that covered the counters.

By late afternoon, I gave up trying to find a silver lining and locked myself in my bedroom and cried.

Relief came, finally, as darkness fell and I put a pillow over my head and ended the miserable day in sleep.

I woke the next morning promising to put the horrible holiday behind me. I checked e-mails and saw three from women to whom I had sent cards the week before. Two are writers and mentors to me and to other women who write. Their e-mails told me how surprised and touched they had been to receive my cards. Their happiness at having received them made me smile.

The third e-mail came from an acquaintance that had placed for adoption the only child she'd ever given birth to. That was decades ago, but she’s talked with me about her son often, probably because my own two sons were adopted. I knew Mother's Day must be hard for her -- no woman ever forgets a child that had once been hers whether born to them or not. She, too, thanked me for thinking of her on Mother's Day and her gratitude put a lump in my throat.

When I returned home from work that day, I saw the envelope that had arrived in the mail a few days earlier. I absentmindedly opened it and was surprised to see a card there, this one from one of my son's birthmothers. The card said simply that she couldn't imagine her life without me in it.

I'm grateful to have her in my life, as well.

I'm grateful to all of them, the women, and the other mothers who reached out to me. Their notes of appreciation reminded me of the love that surrounds me every day. Love I too often take for granted. I took for granted the love of my kind husband and my adored sons on Mother's Day. That's why I let their disappointing performances hurt me so much. I shouldn't have let that happen. I should have taken myself out somewhere, enjoyed the day knowing their love was there whether they took me out for brunch on one particular Sunday or not.

It came a day late but my gratitude allowed me to put the happy back into Mother's Day.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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I might as well be cradling my first newborn now that my son has turned thirteen. I have no idea how to parent this teenager.

I'm unsure how to guide him through the demands a teenager faces these days. Take, for example, the huge amount of complicated homework assigned at his junior high school. He is expected to do far more work than I was at his age and the consequences of his failing to do so are severe.

More than half the students at his school are in GATE classes so the advanced placement program originally designed for a handful of truly gifted students has become the norm. And worse, receiving anything less than an A grade on their work is considered failure.

Pity the B-average student.

A friend of mine believed her son would learn best by being left alone with his assignments. She didn't nag him to finish nor punish him when he failed to do so. A bright boy who was GATE identified in the first grade, he nonetheless forgot to pass his work in or lost it in the black hole that is his backpack.

Despite test scores proving his high intelligence, his C-average grades prohibited his entry into his two choices for public high school. He recently learned he was assigned instead to the large, urban campus identified by school and government officials as “troubled.”

That seems like a high price for a thirteen-year-old boy to pay for a mediocre report card.

I compare that to the mother of my son's classmate who shared with me last week how exhausted she was after staying up until three that morning finishing her son's science project. That was the same science project that sat at open house next to the one my son completed without my help. I studied the two projects propped up on poster board and noticed how neat and mature the other boy's presentation was. The vocabulary in the narrative attached to it was beyond anything I'd ever heard him utter.

What could possibly be fair about the grade his project would earn compared to that given to my son?

Yet, I feel certain sympathy for the other boy's mother, a compassion that comes from knowing she was doing what she thought her son needed.

I struggle constantly with such questions -- how much to guide my son, how much to pressure, how often to leave him alone.
The world is different than when I was a teenager. The life skills my son will need to succeed are different than what worked for me. My mother tells me she faced the same concerns when I was a teen -- the world I came to age in was different than the one that saw her transition to adulthood. She, too, had to feel her way through my teen years and trust that I would survive her imperfect parenting, which, of course, I did.

It's just the way of things, I suppose. Society evolves as humanity's time on the planet lengthens. No generation is identical to any other. No era of childrearing foolproof.

And so I offer my son what I promised him the first time I held him in my arms -- that I would parent him with everything I have: My instincts, my common sense, my unconditional love. I promise again that I will do my best -- my imperfect, often-flawed best.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

She congratulates her husband's mother and grandmother for his unique trait. She said they had taught him to play bridge and included him in games with their "old lady" friends.

Friendships developed across the card table and my friend's husband became accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of aging -- stooped shoulders, thin voices, and the wobbly red line where lipstick should be. He's not discomforted either when discussions turn from politics to dead husbands, ailing hearts or children and grandchildren who don't stay in touch. He understands older women and they appreciate him for that. He still plays bridge with his mother.

I wonder if my two sons will grow up enjoying the company of old ladies. It would be sad if they didn't. I'd be sorry if they missed knowing up-close the wisdom and gentleness that resides in a matriarch's heart.

What am I doing then to encourage relationships beyond the obligatory kiss when Grandma arrives for a visit? My mother lives on the other side of the country so her visits are rare. And when she does visit I use up most of her time. I miss her and want to catch up. But I also deliberately stand as a barrier between my mother and my sons.

I do that partly to protect her from their rambunctiousness -- my mother is easily stressed these days. But I'm also protecting them from my mother's increasing physical and mental frailties, changes brought on by aging and ill health.

Maybe I shouldn't protect them. Maybe I should allow them near even though on occasion she sees things that aren't there. Maybe I should let them learn, as I have learned, to soothe her when her voice rises in panic over some imagined threat. Moments like these don't prevent my enjoying other times with my mother -- attending a movie up for best picture or sharing dinner at a great new restaurant.

They don't have to prevent my sons from enjoying their grandmother, as well.
My own grandmother had grown quite frail the last time we saw her. At 91, her appearance frightened my seven-year-old son so I kept them apart. I think now I shouldn't have done that. I should have let her approach him and allow him to see up close what an old lady looks like.

Maybe he would have gotten used to the look of her bony fingers and hands. Maybe then he would have noticed instead the smile that always lit her face whenever her grandchildren and great grandchildren gathered around.

Maybe he would have missed her more when she died a few weeks later.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

From the first day of school, however, things were different with my younger son. He was obviously smart and sweet, but his teacher complained he was a challenge in the classroom. He refused to write, wiggled in his seat during quiet times, poked and prodded other children to distraction and sometimes tears.

Over the following months, my husband and I sought possible causes – food allergies, anxiety, learning disorders – and explored possible treatments. I worried and turned for support to my peers. But my efforts to reach out to the parents of my son’s classmates were returned with little more than chilly politeness and often not even that.

Circles of chatting moms would remain closed to me as I waited nearby to take my son home. One mother handing out birthday invitations hid the stack of envelopes behind her back as I approached.

Clearly my son would not be invited to that party. What I realized that day was that I wouldn’t be invited to any parties, either. My son may have exhibited inappropriate behavior from time to time but it was me the mothers didn’t want to be near.

I moved my waiting place to a bench several yards away to avoid encountering the awkward silence that interrupted the happy chatter of the other moms whenever I approached. We survived that difficult school year, my son and I.

We found a therapist whose treatment has calmed him without diminishing his natural cheeriness and enthusiasm. She taught my husband and me how to parent his unique needs.

This year my son has a new teacher, a man so gifted and compassionate that the school directs many of its so-called “high-maintenance” kids to his classroom. My son has blossomed there.

And life on the bench?

It turned out that I wasn’t alone there after all. My son wasn’t the only child who for one reason or another didn’t fit in. Over time, mothers of those other children approached me and we sought out relationships as our children became friends. My son’s birthday is approaching. And in addition to whomever else he wants to invite to his party, I’ll be sure to hand out an invitation to every single child whose mother sits on that bench.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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."

Kim allowed me to become a mother and I'll never stop being grateful for that. But she didn't stop being a mother just because she gave her baby to someone else to raise. She has continued to love the boy we both adore without ever making me feel less his mother by doing so.

I'll never stop being grateful for that, either.

A few months ago, Christopher suffered a sudden, serious illness. While I was at his side at the hospital for five days, my husband alerted family and friends. I didn't know it at the time but Kim e-mailed constantly begging for news. She worried frantically and yet there was nothing she could do but pray.

My son did recover and in the days following his return home I read over the cards and e-mails that had been sent to support our family. The ones that touched me the most, though, were from Kim, who along with her husband and parents had researched the strange disease -- a severe allergic reaction called Stevens Johnson Syndrome -- that had attacked my son.

Her last note came after she had learned his condition had improved. She wrote mother to mother: "Our prayers have been answered."

She was right; the prayers of both our families had been answered. What she didn't know though was that my own prayer had been answered years before when I met her, a terrified teenager who became pregnant the night she lost her virginity.

They were answered when Kim trusted me to become her son's mother. And they've been answered every day since as she continues to be a loving force in my family's life.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

The worst example is from our first Thanksgiving in Sacramento. That’s when we were hosting my husband’s family for dinner and our one and only toilet backed up so badly a hole was blown in the pipe that led to the city’s sewer line in the street.

The pressure had built up so much that when the pipe burst it sent the, uh, debris that had been flushed down our toilet high into the air creating a geyser of, uh, stuff in my front yard.

My husband and I watched in horror from our living room window. Finally, he turned to me and said, “We could laugh about this or we could cry about this.”

We laughed until tears poured down our faces. Determined to break this expensive albeit memorable tradition, I tried over the last several weeks to ignore the dishwasher’s decline.

First, the front cover broke off, revealing a wall of tubes and wires. Then the control panel worked itself loose and dangled precariously above the floor remaining connected only by a slim handful of wires. A friend who visited recently gawked, “What is wrong with your kitchen?”

When my husband insisted I face the undeniable fact that this holiday season would not be the one to end the cycle of poorly-timed appliance breakdown, I resisted. The dishwasher still worked, I reminded him, and suggested he duct tape both panels back onto the front of the dishwasher.

The dishwasher has since stopped working. I’ve been scrubbing dishes by hand for a week and somehow have avoided admitting to my husband that I was wrong.

Nonetheless he wisely disappeared for a few hours over the weekend and returned with an early Christmas present.

The new dishwasher will be delivered tomorrow.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

I made cookies out of whole wheat flour and rice bran. The result was a platter of brown blobs that tasted like baseballs. My son returned home that evening humiliated. He begged me to make “normal” cookies next time it was our turn.

And I promised I would.

Now it was time to make good on that promise. And it was also time to write. So I did both, moving from the computer to the kitchen counter.

Later, as the cookies cooled and my attention had moved fully to the essay I was writing, my six-year-old plopped into the chair next to my desk. He sighed, signaling he had something on his mind.

“What?” I yelled, angry at yet another interruption.

“Mom?” he said, with a quiver in his chin. “What does ‘dead’ mean?”

My fingers froze above the keyboard. I turned toward my son and saw in his face a child’s curiosity – and a little worry. I smiled to myself, clicked off the computer and surrendered.

Sometimes you have to stop writing about life and just live it.

by Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

My son returned home that evening humiliated. He begged me to make “normal” cookies next time it was our turn. And I promised I would. Now it was time to make good on the promise. And it was also time to write. So I did both, moving from the computer to the kitchen counter.

Later, as the cookies cooled and my attention had moved fully to the essay I was writing, my six-year-old plopped into the chair next to my desk. He sighed, signaling he had something on his mind. “What?” I yelled, angry at yet another interruption. “Mom?” he said, with a quiver in his chin. “What does ‘dead’ mean?”My fingers froze above the keyboard. I turned toward my son and saw in his face a child’s curiosity – and a little worry. I smiled to myself, clicked off the computer and surrendered.

Sometimes, you have to stop writing about life and just live it.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

What I discovered upon my return to an office near the California capitol in Sacramento where I was to write copy for a politics and public policy newsletter was that a lot had changed.

The computers were flatter and faster, e-mail replaced conversation even with people in the same room and most of the background information I needed to write a story waited for me on the Web.

What I also discovered was that my wardrobe was hopelessly out of date.

I don’t mean a little off. I mean the clothes I thought were classic and classy made me look ridiculous. My silk paisley skirt was way too long and the heels on my pumps too low. The shoulder pads in my blazer needed to be removed and my tucked-in blouse needed to be pulled out. As I studied the women around me I realized even my at-home wardrobe was unacceptable.

My best jeans that fit so comfortably constituted the greatest fashion sin of all, a straight-legged, high-waisted abomination so infamous it had a name: Mom Jeans.

It took weeks of watching the women who worked around me (many of them unmarried and many others without children) to figure out what changes I needed to make. That is, if, wearing fashionable clothes was my goal. I was constantly telling my children to disregard what others say, and do what they think is right. Shouldn’t I do the same? If I had been perfectly happy in my wardrobe a month earlier, why make what were sure to be expensive changes now?

Then it hit me. I write. I use words as language. But other things help us communicate, too – our tone of voice, facial expressions. Clothes are language too, I realized. I saw that in the quick judgments I made upon meeting contacts at my new job. I decided within a minute if they were modern or old fashioned, careful or sloppy, friendly or standoffish based on how they appeared to me. I wasn’t always right, but that didn’t change the fact that I made quick judgments all the same. Clothes, as much as our words, body language and voices, are parts of how we communicate.

Who was I then? What did I want my clothes to say about me?

I haven’t figured that out. Somedays, I go to work in tailored pants and jackets, others I wear loose skirts and long tops. Somedays, I look more like a reporter. Others I look more like a mom. But the process of exploring who I am has been an informative one.

And, if I’m to be honest, a lot of fun, too.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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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.

"Thank God it’s legal now," said my court reporter friend, a leggy athlete in her 40s.

"How many of us have had abortions?" the first grade teacher asked suddenly throwing her hand in the air daring the rest of us to be honest.

The fourth grade teacher put up her hand. Then the daycare provider. Then the devout Catholic journalist, and the stay-at-home mom. Finally, I put up my own hand. Only one of us, a mother of three, sat with her hand still on her lap, her face frozen in awe as she surveyed the six raised arms around her.

"Wow," said the court reporter as she considered the terrified pregnant teenagers we had each been.

"Wow," I said thinking of all the babies who hadn't been born.

"We didn't have a choice," the court reporter said as if reading my mind

"We had choices," I said. "We could have placed our babies for adoption."

My friends knew I'd say that. I had adopted my two sons, both of whom were born to pregnant teens. Infertility followed my own abortion and adoption was the only way I could become a mother when the time came I was ready to become one.

I often thought about the choice I had made as a teenager. I have no regrets. I am the mother I am to the boys I adore because of all the decisions I've made in my life, including abortion. Still, my sons are my own because other pregnant girls didn't make the same choice I did.

I can't shake the nagging ambivalence I feel about that.

I had my excuses, though. Adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame when I became pregnant in 1978. Abortion offered what seemed the only solution to a problem so big it seemed capable of devouring me.

It was abortion or end up like Janis, a student at our Connecticut high school who carried her baby to term and placed it for adoption under the stare of our snickering classmates. Even now, some 30 years later, if someone doesn't remember her name they call her "the girl who gave away her baby."

Abortion rescued me from that.

Many of us who gratefully sought abortion after it was newly legalized in the '70s are mothers now. And the issue has become more complicated than it seemed when we were young. For some of us, abortion is regarded as our liberator; for others it’s our burden.

My friend with the three children stirred and I noticed her eyes glistened with tears.

"I never told anyone," she whispered lifting her hand slightly.

"You, too?" I asked.

She nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek.

Each of us had dealt with the experience of abortion in our own way. Some of us struggled with the memory, others barely thought about it. But every one of us in the room had been shaped by it.

Abortion is part of who we are.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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