Donna Hechler Porter

January is National Slow Cooker Month, and so, thinking about crock pots got me to thinking . . . One of my most vivid Christmas memories as a child was of my Mother receiving a crock pot for Christmas. Now, before you naysayers do your naysaying and ask quietly or even out loud why did she get such a Christmas gift - she had asked for that crock pot. This was, after all, the 70s. Children got five inexpensive gifts at Christmas time and maybe some candy in their stockings .

. . . You see, after almost 40 years of suffering from large, painful breasts, and thanks to the generosity of my mother who threw part of my inheritance my way and early, I had a breast reduction on August 1st. I really NEVER thought that day would come. I was especially distraught when insurance refused to pay for it about two months back. It appeared, according to their guidelines, that they would never pay for it. That’s Cigna for you . . .

Recently an article came over my Facebook feed from a fellow homeschooling mother. (You can find it here.) It was a mock poem from a little boy begging his teachers to let him keep his recess because he was jittery enough in class and had a hard time focusing. Needless to say, this boy was one that had been diagnosed with ADHD. He is, sadly, one of thousands. And the number of boys medicated into “submission” is growing by the day.

Okay, so my boys are learning to drive. Actually, we’ve been at it a while now. But yesterday, while one of them was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat, I thought for the first time “Geesh, why do I have to live in this time period where it is dangerous to even let them leave the house alone?” Then, I heard a voice in the car, and no, it was not from the kid in the backseat – “life has always been dangerous. Two hundred and seventy years ago . . .

. . . Not only do mothers sacrifice their bodies to bring children into the world, but they lose THEIR time, THEIR interests, and have to broaden THEIR goals and THEIR world to include their children. A woman’s life is never the same once she has children, and for most of us our life is divided in half, our life before children and our life after children. It could be said that Keeping Secrets is a story of two mothers – Mary McKechnie and Abigail Cayle – both of whom sacrif