Reprint: Brain, Child

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So I got a simultaneous tweet from The M Word editor Kerry Clare & email from Hilary Levey Friedman mid-afternoon. The e-hubbub was because Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers had just posted an article that referred to Clare's collection of conversations about mothering.

I clicked through, which lead me to a "Top 10 Humour Books" list. I expected to see my name mentioned in passing, as is usually the case with anthology reviews, but was surprised/pleased to see that the book was listed because of my essay.

Which is sort of fun. Anyways, if you can't be bothered to click through—even though the article also includes references to Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott & Porn for New Moms From the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Collective—here's the section that deals with The M Word:

The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood Edited by Kerry Clare
In trying to summarize the intention of the anthology editor Clare writes that it’s about life with a uterus, in all stages of life. This collection by Canadian women isn’t all funny—far from it in some cases. But one of the essays, “Primipara” by Ariel Gordon, made me laugh so hard when I read it, and it stayed with me for a long time. In the piece she reveals a poem to a coworker she wrote that says that if she had had twins, she would have eaten one or sent it back. Gordon’s honest take on why having only one child was the right choice for her is elevated by her language choices (“I regret, too, that the girl won’t know the burnt caramel of loving and hating a sibling.”) and her insight (“People mostly ask me when my next book is coming out instead of when my next child is due. It’s a relief to have the poetry and the parenting separate again, though really they’re not separate at all.”). Proof that humor comes to us all individually in different forms.