LOL Stands for “Labor of Love,” Right?

September 10, 2007

Filed in: The Way We Live Now

The Fall 07 Brain,Child is out and about in the world, meaning in print and now online. Yay.

I wrote an essay for the very first issue, back in I think it was 1902, when my ovaries were still wearing miniskirts and tank tops. Since then, I’ve been very, very slowly reeled in, till this last issue, in which I am listed as a contributing editor and for which I did the most I’ve ever done, editing-wise and writing-wise, for a single issue.

It’s enormously daunting and enormously satisfying. It’s like making Thanksgiving dinner four times a year, instead of just the once. Halfway through, you’ve been reduced to slopping things about and muttering to yourself, “who the f*ck invented this meal, anyhow? Sadists? Sadist pilgrims? Sadist natives? Who is to blame, I must know! You can’t carve a turkey and mash potatoes and candy yams and make lumpless gravy all at the same exact moment. It can’t be done.”

But somehow it’s all finally spread out on the table before you, a feast to feed people’s souls, and all the muttery-ness drains out of you and you feel happy and fulfilled.

So too with Brain,Child, only minus the yams. (I hate candied yams; isn’t that the very definition of gilding the lily?) It’s spread out at last before everyone—and even if some of the guests are a tad disgruntled with the menu (I’m talking to you, anti-circumcisionists! Remember your table manners, ladies)—to this cook, one of just many, it’s a wondrous thing. Dig in.