Nicole Graev Lipson, MOTHERS AND OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: A Memoir in Essays
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:45]Nicole Grave-Lipson is the author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a memoir in essays.
[0:51]Nicole's writing has appeared in the Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review of the Gettysburg
[0:54]Review, Rivertease, Fourth Genre, The Millions, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and
[0:59]Marie Claire, among other venues.
[1:01]Her work has been awarded a push-cart prize, nominated for a National Magazine Award,
[1:06]and selected for the Best American Essays 2024.
[1:09]Born and raised in New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her family.
[1:12]Welcome, Nicole.
[1:13]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to Zibi to talk about mothers and other fictional
[1:19]characters and memoir in essays.
[1:21]So good.
[1:22]Congratulations.
[1:23]Thank you.
[1:24]Thanks so much for having me and thrilled.
[1:26]In rereading the book, your sentences, the way you describe everything, how much I feel
[1:35]like I have lived in your shoes, seen what you have seen, and how well you captured moments
[1:41]in time, particularly growing up when we did, and our mothers, and that whole world.
[1:48]You just nailed it, not to mention today.
[1:51]So I just am obsessed.
[1:53]It's so good.
[1:54]Thank you.
[1:55]I feel like I can retire now.
[1:56]Thank you.
[1:57]It's so nice to hear.
[1:58]You have so many themes.
[2:00]Well, let me let you talk to talk about where did the inspiration for this come from.
[2:05]How would you just describe it, tell me the backstory and the regular story?
[2:10]Sure.
[2:11]So mothers and other fictional characters is about the strange and relentless desire that
[2:18]the world has to reduce women to ready-made templates and archetypes.
[2:23]And it's also about the ways that women can become complicit in this process and how
[2:30]easy it is to find ourselves performing fictional versions of who we are.
[2:36]And I find this way, and I find my way into this territory by always right, I always start
[2:41]from the personal.
[2:42]And so I find my way into this territory by writing as honestly and truthfully as I possibly
[2:48]can about my own experience embodying these templates as a girl, a young adult, a mother
[2:55]of three, and a woman now standing in the shallows of middle age, gazing out at the rest
[3:02]of her life.
[3:03]And so they all of these essays sort of tease out my own attempts to tease out truth
[3:08]from fiction in my own life.
[3:10]One of the epigraphs of the book is a quote from the philosopher Simone Vell's notebook.
[3:18]And she writes that imagination and fiction make up three quarters of our real life.
[3:24]And that was sort of one of my inspirations as I wrote the book.
[3:30]Wow.
[3:31]Well, what you capture, the way you intimately write about marriage.
[3:36]And even the way you describe when you go for like a date night with your husband or
[3:41]a way for the weekend and how many things you have to line up and how when you finally
[3:46]get to the hotel, it's like slamming an overpacked closet door.
[3:51]You set it better.
[3:52]But like just the image, right?
[3:54]That like you're you're just like holding it and you know it's going to like collapse as
[3:57]soon as you open it again.
[3:58]And like how can you really relax in that case like, but you don't say it that way.
[4:02]you write it in like this very poetic, almost way where you're forced to take it in kind
[4:09]of slowly and imagine yourself.
[4:11]I don't know.
[4:12]I'm so intense.
[4:13]And you write and you write about your own relationship with your body and makeup and eating
[4:19]disorders.
[4:20]Tell me a little bit about that because I found it beautiful the way you wrote about your
[4:24]experience in college.
[4:25]Yeah.
[4:26]So I think sort of building on this idea that I just mentioned that I'm exploring in
[4:32]the book, the ways that we as women sort of can step into these fictional versions of
[4:37]who we are.
[4:38]I've given a lot of thought over the course of my life to the way to beauty standards
[4:43]and the ways that we can end up fictionalizing ourselves in like the most literal and physical
[4:50]way possible, right?
[4:51]Which is to actually transform our bodies and fictionalize them in ways whether that's
[4:58]through like in my own experience and I write about the eating disorder that I had that
[5:04]I struggled with in college and a little beyond.
[5:07]So really controlling my body and kind of as a way to step into that fiction of the ideal
[5:15]like young woman, especially growing up in the 90s when the ideal young woman looks like
[5:23]and so I write about that and I write about again, my personal experience as a window
[5:28]into the culture, our culture at large and one of the things that interest me about beauty
[5:34]standards in particular is I feel like there's so many realms of life where there's
[5:40]almost this schism in us as women where we can know something intellectually and we can
[5:46]know intellectually like of course it's a waste of time to like be wandering the
[5:51]aisles of Sephora for half an hour searching for like that serum that is magically
[5:57]somehow going to make me young again right or like of course we know that it's you know
[6:03]absurd that we should hold ourselves to these standard these physical standards of thinness.
[6:10]So we can know that intellectually but we cannot help but be part of the culture in which
[6:18]we live and we absorb those messages into ourselves in a bodily way and so I think there
[6:26]always is this divide in us and that's really what I was trying to capture in that specific
[6:31]essay that you're talking about right now how can we know something intellectually as
[6:36]women and yet at the same time try to embody these ideals.
[6:41]Oh and the story you talk about going to get your hair done to cover up the grey which
[6:45]is now like sadly I don't know every three months situation that I keep putting off and
[6:51]I'm like oh no I couldn't possibly need to do this again I just did this and by now
[6:55]kids are like oh you only have grey hair and I'm like okay I guess it's time I did that
[6:59]you that you came home and you asked your daughter like how you looked and she said well
[7:03]I like it when you look like you right yes and then yeah and that kind of freed you it felt
[7:08]like to to be who you are and maybe not wear makeup all the time when you're so funny you're
[7:14]like I'm not sure anybody's noticed but I have decided not to wear makeup right exactly yeah I
[7:20]think like that scene right where I go it's when I color my hair for the first time when the
[7:26]grey is headed I think I write that it's like they could no longer pass as highlights right
[7:31]crossed that tipping point and I came home and my daughter I could tell like she didn't come
[7:37]right out and say like I hate your hair but she you know she recognized on some level like
[7:45]this doesn't really look like my mom as I know her anymore and what's the point right and I think
[7:52]that's so true I mean you know if I think about myself personally if I'm trying to put myself
[7:58]together right or look nice and I guess this is a wonderful thing as I as I'm saying and I'm
[8:04]recognizing what a wonderful thing this is but my husband doesn't really care you know like
[8:09]my husband like if I'm getting dressed and I'm like how does this dress look you know he like
[8:14]barely glances up and I think you know the truth is like he doesn't really care whether I'm
[8:20]wearing sweatpants with my hair like a mess in a top-notter whether I'm wearing a beautiful dress
[8:27]you know I think it it goes to show or it makes me question like for whom do we go through these
[8:33]performances right if our the people we love most in the world our partners you know our children
[8:42]our friends love us right just the way we are you know what is it that is causing us to strive
[8:49]for impossible standards of physical appearance right isn't it that we all just like get dressed
[8:56]for each other as for other women it's mostly for other women at this point for other women
[9:01]and I also think some internalized standard that we are holding ourselves to like it's almost for
[9:06]ourselves which is so peculiar and really interesting so really I'm really interested in
[9:13]things like that in the book you wrote really beautifully about motherhood can I read this one
[9:20]from let me I don't know what essays from but I loved it let's see it's from the essay called
[9:27]which lineage can I read this about your daughter Lee I would love that okay he said how easy it
[9:33]was to imagine in the first weeks of Lee's life that I would never fail her every part of her
[9:38]being the soft hill of her belly her blinking eyes her parted lips with their tiny slips of breath
[9:44]insisted that perfection was possible and that it could be sustained and nurtured if only I remained
[9:49]up to the task not every woman perhaps was up to this task but my god I would be new to motherhood
[9:54]I had the conviction of a convert the enthusiasm of the freshly arrived the hardest thing for me
[9:59]about mother
[10:00]but 11 years and two more children later
[10:02]has been the gap between this desire and reality.
[10:05]The truth is, I have failed my children again and again.
[10:09]I've failed them with my laziness, my preoccupation
[10:12]and my insensitivity.
[10:14]I've failed them with my habit of murmuring,
[10:16]oh, and that's funny.
[10:17]While they tell me stories,
[10:18]I cannot bring myself to focus on.
[10:21]I've failed them by rushing them past ant hills,
[10:23]past robin's nests, past the imprint of copper leaves
[10:27]on the rain wash sidewalk.
[10:28]For no purpose, other than getting going.
[10:31]I've failed them by comparing them to others
[10:33]because look how polite miles is
[10:35]and how Julia hustles like wildfire to get open for the past
[10:39]and why can't you say please like that?
[10:41]Hustle like that too.
[10:42]I failed them every time.
[10:44]I've forced their squirming torsos into car seats,
[10:47]wrangled their flailing bodies up the stairs,
[10:49]gripped their arms more tightly than I should.
[10:51]I've failed them by snapping, shouting in worst of all,
[10:54]out of all proportion to the cause,
[10:56]rising out of some hideous, stifled place inside,
[10:59]screaming at them at times of the rage,
[11:01]so unbridled it terrifies even me.
[11:04]Can I redeem myself if I describe my love for my children,
[11:07]heavy and silver dark as mercury?
[11:09]So dense at times that it traps my breath in my chest.
[11:12]Let me tell you about the songs I've sang them.
[11:14]The stories I've told them,
[11:15]the picture books I've read so many times
[11:17]I have them memorized.
[11:18]Let me describe our traditions,
[11:20]the lighting of Shabbat candles on Fridays
[11:22]and the double layer cookie cake on birthdays
[11:24]and the sharing of our days highs and lows
[11:25]before we turn out the lights.
[11:27]Let me conjure the months.
[11:28]I nourish them with nothing but milk from my breasts,
[11:31]gallons of myself drained away in a million tiny sips
[11:34]and the hours I've spent soothing their fevered bodies.
[11:36]Let me speak of the sacrifices I've made,
[11:38]the desires I've tamped down,
[11:40]the career I've delayed,
[11:41]the dreams I've tucked away in service of their desires,
[11:44]their passion, their dreams.
[11:45]Ah, but look, already I find myself slipping from tenderness
[11:49]toward something more tooth and suspect,
[11:51]sabotaging my own defense.
[11:53]So you see, it is not so easy
[11:55]to separate the angel from the witch,
[11:56]the goddess from the monster.
[11:58]Our goodness has made monsters of us all.
[12:02]Oh, so good, so good.
[12:04]It's really amazing to hear it through your voice.
[12:07]Yeah, thank you for reading that.
[12:10]I mean, who cannot relate to that?
[12:13]That we all try to do our best.
[12:16]And yet, there are times we fail our ideals of ourselves,
[12:20]fail the moms we wanna be,
[12:22]fail the people we wanna be,
[12:24]even if it has nothing to do with kids,
[12:25]that despite our best intentions,
[12:28]other behaviors come out.
[12:30]And we can regret them and we can do lots of good.
[12:33]And yet, they're still there.
[12:35]And what do we do with that information?
[12:37]How do we move forward?
[12:38]Yeah, what do we do with that information?
[12:40]It really is amazing.
[12:41]I can, you know, even as you're reading that,
[12:43]I can put myself back in that mind frame
[12:46]of having, you know, a newborn baby.
[12:49]And just, I actually remember so clearly thinking,
[12:53]how can anyone, this was my first child?
[12:56]How could anyone ever yell at their baby, right?
[13:02]And, and, you know, on some level,
[13:06]that belief is still in me, right?
[13:08]When I, when I'm in my best moments, you know,
[13:11]and I'm lying with one of my children in bed
[13:14]in like a tender moment.
[13:15]And, you know, that other part of me is not there.
[13:19]You know, the part that can snap
[13:21]or the part that can be totally distracted
[13:23]when they're telling me something or,
[13:26]and I think it's so true that,
[13:29]that we have to just keep moving forward,
[13:32]doing our best to put our best foot forward.
[13:36]In one of the essays in the book, Takunalam Ted,
[13:39]I talk about the sort of the Jewish value of Takunalam,
[13:45]which is repairing the world.
[13:47]And that whole idea comes from this belief
[13:51]that the world is imperfect,
[13:54]and that, that kind of standard or ideal of perfection
[13:59]is always there, and it is human's work
[14:03]to try to constantly, constantly prepare.
[14:08]And so, the best I can do is when I have aired,
[14:13]when I have aired, which we all do,
[14:16]because we're human, is to admit that to my children,
[14:23]to my spouse, to whoever I've let down, you know,
[14:28]according to my own standards of letting someone down.
[14:31]And I think that's something I've personally become
[14:33]more comfortable with as I've aged and gotten older.
[14:36]I don't know about you, but, you know,
[14:38]I feel like I used to have like so much pride
[14:40]and now I realize how good it feels
[14:42]to recognize and acknowledge and speak the wrongs I've done.
[14:48]Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[14:49]It's much easier to say, I'm sorry.
[14:51]Like right away, like I was wrong.
[14:53]I got it, I get it.
[14:55]You don't even have to keep saying that.
[14:56]I mess up.
[14:57]Moving on, I messed up, I'm sorry.
[14:59]Yeah. And then mothers especially,
[15:01]because I think we carry so much,
[15:04]we hold ourselves to such high expectations,
[15:09]which is, you know, a result of the very high
[15:14]and impossible expectations that were held to air culture.
[15:18]And I think it's so, you know,
[15:21]it's a struggle that I outline in my book.
[15:24]It's not easy, right?
[15:25]To kind of learn the self, to the self forgiveness
[15:30]that lets us out of that guilt.
[15:34]It's a constant struggle,
[15:35]but it's so wonderful when you slowly
[15:38]allow yourself to let go a little bit.
[15:41]And you show us through this one outing
[15:45]to your poetry class, like what it's like to be in it.
[15:50]And then what it's like when you just pull out
[15:53]of the rain storm for a second and remember who you are.
[15:57]Because that's really what it felt like.
[15:58]There you were like on your way and then there.
[16:01]And then you even end up in this flirtation
[16:03]because you're really flirting with the fact
[16:05]that like you could actually still be who you are.
[16:08]And what would that life even be?
[16:10]I'm so glad that you saw that and said that.
[16:14]Because that's exactly what I was trying to get at in that piece.
[16:17]Yeah, I think especially when we have younger kids,
[16:22]the essay you're talking about,
[16:23]my kids were still pretty young.
[16:26]I think like four, six and nine or something like this.
[16:29]And it's almost as if, you know,
[16:32]we are in some ways trapped in this very particular routine
[16:38]you know, this very particular set schema to our days.
[16:43]I definitely felt that way.
[16:45]And then to have an escape from it,
[16:48]to have something out of the norm open up in our world
[16:52]can be, you know, not just freeing for that moment in our day,
[16:56]but I felt going to this poetry class,
[16:59]which was so out of the norm for me at that stage of my life
[17:03]when caregiving was so urgent.
[17:06]You know, felt this kind of release back into other parts of myself,
[17:11]you know, other sensuous parts of myself,
[17:14]other intellectual parts of myself
[17:16]that obviously hadn't gone away
[17:19]when I became a mother,
[17:21]they just sort of were sublimated a little bit
[17:24]or pushed aside or not at the center of things.
[17:28]Yeah. Well, describe how it, how you wrote this book.
[17:32]Was it like one essay at a time?
[17:35]Did you have it out?
[17:36]Like, tell me about the process of it
[17:37]and when it became a book and I know you have wanted to push,
[17:41]a push card recently, which was so exciting.
[17:43]Well, they just like, when did everything happen and how?
[17:47]So the, the book, I guess when I started writing the book,
[17:51]I wasn't yet aware that I was writing a book.
[17:54]I was writing when my kids were younger,
[17:57]individual essays that I sort of intended to be standalone essays
[18:02]and I had written maybe three or four of them
[18:06]when I started to recognize that even if on the surface,
[18:10]they were about quite different things, you know,
[18:13]like maybe one was about trying to figure out
[18:16]what to do with my frozen embryos left over
[18:19]from around of IVF, right?
[18:20]Or another one was about my friend, my dear friend Sarah
[18:25]and the closeness of our relationship.
[18:28]I began to realize that all of them did circle around this theme
[18:31]of the blurry boundary between truth and fiction
[18:36]when one is a woman.
[18:38]And it was then that I started to think of this
[18:41]as a possibly a book project, a project with a larger scope.
[18:46]And at that point, I started then thinking, you know, okay,
[18:49]well, you know, if this, what would the arc of this memoir
[18:52]in essays be and then began writing pieces
[18:55]that I thought would fill in that arc.
[18:58]But I also, I just want to say that I've written
[19:02]for as long as I can remember, like it's always been my passion
[19:06]and loved it and, you know, my favorite subject
[19:09]in school is English and all of this is the same experience
[19:13]that so many writers have.
[19:14]But, you know, like when I graduated from college,
[19:17]there was no one like, like,
[19:19]McKinsey wasn't recruiting essayists.
[19:22]I was like, what does no work?
[19:24]Well, you're, and I was so jealous of my friends who are like,
[19:28]I know I want to go to law school or, you know,
[19:30]I'm being recruited by McKinsey and getting paid a lot
[19:34]just at 22 year olds.
[19:36]And so for a number of years, I did like writing adjacent things.
[19:41]Like I worked in book publishing and I was at high school
[19:45]English teacher for a number of years.
[19:48]And I was always sort of circling around the writing.
[19:52]And I was, I did continue to write and freelance on the side,
[19:55]but it was never my central thing until...
[20:00]ironically, because I think there is this understandably,
[20:03]this belief that becoming a mother pulls you away
[20:07]from your passions.
[20:08]But for me, it was sort of the opposite
[20:10]that once I became a mother, once I got past
[20:14]the sort of infancy, like the in it,
[20:18]postpartum phase, I was sort of overcome
[20:22]by this fierce determination and resolve
[20:26]to center writing in my life in a way
[20:28]that I never had before.
[20:31]And so I don't know.
[20:32]Sometimes I think of motherhood as like the fire
[20:35]in my foraging process, like it is the thing
[20:39]that made me center writing.
[20:42]And it is the thing that made this book happen.
[20:46]I love that.
[20:47]Well, it's really beautiful.
[20:49]Congratulations, thank you.
[20:51]I'm really excited for you.
[20:52]And it's like not too literary, but beautiful.
[20:57]Like it is literary, but it's not overly like,
[20:59]so it's not off-putting.
[21:01]I don't know.
[21:02]I feel like it just hit the sweet spot.
[21:03]And yeah, I just, I got a lot out of it.
[21:06]So thank you so much.
[21:08]Thank you, Zibi.
[21:09]Thank you, Zibi.
[21:09]Thank you.
[21:10]Thank you for telling me I'm on.
[21:11]My pleasure.
[21:12]OK, all right.
[21:14]Thanks, Nicole.
[21:15]OK, bye-bye.
[21:17]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[21:20]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[21:22]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[21:25]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens.
[21:28]And spread the word.
[21:30]Thanks so much.
[21:31]Oh, and bye the books.