To write a mem­oir in essays is to acknowl­edge the incon­gru­ous nature of mem­o­ry, the way in which we might remem­ber a scene or episode unteth­ered from its ini­tial con­text. In her debut mem­oir, Moth­ers and Oth­er Fic­tion­al Crea­tures, Nicole Graev Lip­son casts aside the aim of writ­ing a sin­gle, cohe­sive nar­ra­tive. Instead, she has care­ful­ly gath­ered the threads of her many selves — moth­er, friend, daugh­ter, teacher, lover — and woven them into an array of tex­tured fabrics. 

Graev Lip­son is an Eng­lish teacher at heart, and her love of lit­er­a­ture shines through in these twelve metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed essays. They are inti­mate, vul­ner­a­ble, and mov­ing — but they also ground the author’s expe­ri­ence (and, by exten­sion, the reader’s expe­ri­ence) in a long line of oth­ers who have wres­tled with her age-old ques­tions. What does it mean to be a good moth­er? How can we han­dle the shift­ing nature of our rela­tion­ships with our par­ents, chil­dren, and part­ners? Where does the strange jour­ney of inhab­it­ing a chang­ing body lead us? In lyri­cal prose, Graev Lip­son delves into issues sur­round­ing gen­der and aging, and the feel­ing of being torn apart by mul­ti­ple simul­ta­ne­ous desires. 

In one essay, she writes about her con­flict­ing emo­tions regard­ing her eldest child’s gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion — she’s a tomboy, per­haps, or maybe some oth­er iden­ti­ty? Grave Lip­son doesn’t pre­tend to know what the right path is for a moth­er try­ing her best to sup­port a child on her jour­ney of becom­ing. Instead, she exam­ines her own dis­com­fort and calls on var­i­ous lit­er­ary char­ac­ters (Woolf’s Orlan­do, Shakespeare’s Ros­alind, among oth­ers) to sketch a por­trait of exist­ing in a blur­ry mid­dle ground. ​“So often, as a moth­er, I’m either being a gate­keep­er [ … ] or a cheer­leader [ … ] but between these poles lies a dif­fer­ent way,” she writes, going on to explain this third way is to be ​“a shad­ed wood where [my chil­dren] can play out their pos­si­ble selves.” 

Has there ever been a more dif­fi­cult chal­lenge than to let life take its course with­out attempt­ing to exert con­trol? Graev Lip­son asks this ques­tion over and over: When she finds her son mis­be­hav­ing at a Hebrew School tikkun olam activ­i­ty and must come to terms with her own inter­pre­ta­tions of the sit­u­a­tion, when she reck­ons with her par­ents’ com­plex rela­tion­ship, when she strug­gles with being a woman in a chang­ing, aging body. Time and again, life presents a puz­zle. Time and again, the author seeks answers that shift, holo­gram-esque in their shimmering. 

Graev Lipson’s project is to dwell in that shim­mer­ing. Like the many authors (from Emi­ly Dick­en­son to Doris Less­ing) she cites, she isn’t inter­est­ed in solv­ing the human con­di­tion. She wants to rev­el in the poet­ry of it, offer­ing wis­dom and per­spec­tive, and express­ing the nuance with­in us all. With the deft­ness of a skill­ful weaver, she has accom­plished this goal tenfold.