Editors’ Picks – “15” Favorite B,C Archives
In honor of our 15th year in publication, we asked our editors about their most favorite Brain, Child archives. Here are the top 15 selections:
Moment of Recognition (SU 08)
By Suzi Schweikert
The truth is, while I’ve coaxed, pulled, and manhandled hundreds of babies from the womb, I don’t have a birth moment of my own.
All My Children (WI 12)
By Katherine Ozment
As I watch the unfolding tableaux of my own children’s relationships with one another, I think of how all the moments they spend together and all the feelings that crop up, are collecting into the fine dust they will carry with them, whether they like it or not, for the rest of their lives.
Breaking the Law of Averages (FA 08)
By Jill Storey
My pregnancies comprised a set of two random and independent occurrences. My triplet pregnancy was one in eight thousand, and my ovarian pregnancy was, I learned, one in ten thousand.
Wedding Guests (FA 11)
By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
She had arrived into this world to be part of two families, and while she was growing up in one family primarily, she wasn’t marginal.
This Sucks (SI 10)
By Kelly Feinberg
Between the pain of weaning and recovering from the surgery, it was a good three months before I could swoop my baby up into my arms again and hug him close.
Bored Again (FA 10)
By Catherine Newman
But to manage boredom quietly? That’s one of life’s great skills: to allow its nothingness to resolve into wonder, imagination, illumination, or mindfulness, like a blurry picture that focuses suddenly into beauty.
Inappropriate (FA 11)
By Tracy Lynch
Walking around without breasts has become only a part of who I am, but it’s always a reminder of what I’ve been through: my own absolute reality.
The Secret Burden (FA 03)
By Laura Fokkena
I now know that the worst part of parenting is not the diapers or the temper tantrums or the sleepless nights: it’s the fear.
Weaning Ella (SI 07)
By Jill Christman
I lay awake and watched Ella nurse, feeling sick with love and the specter of our separation, touching the tiny droplets of sweat on her soft temple, watching her jaw pumping out the rhythm of our bodies together.
Raising Private Milo (SP 10)
By Andrea Lani
I encourage Milo to go play with the other kids—girls in hand-me-down party dresses and boys he hasn’t seen since he was a nursling—but he is more interested in a skinny guy with a Mohawk who is describing various elements of military-style physical training.
Adventures in Fertility and Mortality (SP 12)
By Zahie El Kouri
In many ways, I am alone in my grief, and in my mind having a baby has become all tied up with my father’s death. A grandchild was perhaps the thing he wanted most in life, and I feel like a failure for not finding the right person to marry earlier, for not having a baby before his death.
It Gets Better (SU 12)
By Catherine Newman
One day, you will once again go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. You will sleep as much as you want to. You’ll actually be shocked if you don’t get to, if a child is ill or can’t fall asleep, even though now you lie wedged into various cribs and cots, night after night, still as a button, while a small somebody drifts off and snaps awake gropingly and drifts off again.
Losing My Religion (WI 03)
By Tracy Mayor
So what if religion is nothing more than a way for mothers to insist some good come of their children’s suffering, a way for humanity to pay respect to the fierce human spirits that have gone before us? That’s enough.
Womanhood (WI 08)
By Stephanie Andersen
As I collapsed in the corner of my borrowed basement room, I knew in the most horrible sincerity that I was unwilling to give up my freedom and security for my womanhood.
Bonus Baby (FA 06)
By Elizabeth Roca
My arrogance, I finally saw, had not been in giving birth to her. It had been in assuming that I would always know her mind and heart.
