“Oh my god, right here it’s: it’s coming for me.”

In Physique: My Life in Elements (Vine Leaves Press; Could 2025), Nina B.Lichtenstein reckons with center age, menopause, and the uncertainty of well being and wellness on this part of life. On a middle-of-the-night rest room run, Lichtenstein experiences a sudden and extreme ache in her hip:

What was this ache about?… As I limped again to mattress at nighttime, I assumed, why not write concerning the recollections lodged inside my varied physique elements? Earlier than it’s too late, my morbid inside voice chimed in. I wished to grasp how I’ve gotten to this past-the-midpoint in life, and I imagined my physique could be probably the most  dependable record-keeper. In that second, I felt an pressing intimacy and wish for complicity with my physique to make sense of all of it. Use me to account in your story, it whispered. Eyes, breasts, hips, and ft: they are going to collaborate with you and information your remembrances, it promised.

For this reader at the least, unfamiliar aches and pains incite intense reflection, if not rumination, about what lies forward for this physique and its elements. However as a substitute of permitting worry to information her pen, Lichtenstein takes trustworthy stock of the elements that made her and make her who she is.

Physique jogs my memory of considered one of my favourite books of all time, Mortal Classes: Notes on the Artwork of Surgical procedure by Richard Selzer. Selzer, a surgeon who practiced from 1960-1985, wrote fantastically concerning the human physique and the human situation. Each Lichtenstein and Selzer have a chapter known as “Stomach,” through which they every dissect its place, functions, and inclinations. For Lichtenstein, this physique half incubated her three Viking-sized sons, digests the wealthy and scrumptious meals and drinks that make life good, and is a cushty house for her organs. It’s also the place that instinct originates: After we say “I’ve a intestine feeling” about one thing, this isn’t just a few hokey or superstitious expression, however an precise approach our physique communicates saved data. Bellies could be tender or onerous, and, as Lichtenstein learns, a stomach is neither an ethical failing nor criterion for worthiness: fats and match is one of the best of all worlds.

I like the construction of this story in elements. Despite the fact that every physique half is a discrete container, characters weave all through. We meet her father in “Nostril,” the place he teaches Lichtenstein to catch, clear, and cook dinner mussels from the household boat. She is transported again to idyllic Nordic summers with household and buddies by way of scent: garlic, thyme, and white wine; cigarette smoke; engine oil; bacon. In “Hair,” Pappa doesn’t approve of her boyfriend when she is a younger grownup. He soothes a motorbike scrape when she’s a baby and appears out for her joints when she’s a teen using a moped in “Knees:” my knees have this distinctive connection to fond and humorous recollections of my pricey pappa.

In “Stomach,” Lichtenstein takes her youngsters to Norway to look after her father as he recovers from lung most cancers surgical procedure in 2005. After which in “Coronary heart,” she shares her heartbreak when he dies eight years after the surgical procedure and the bittersweet expertise of scattering his ashes of their beloved Norwegian Sea. A father’s presence and absence is a theme I return to in my writing and respect in others’ tales, as my father died when he was 48 and I used to be 20, and now I’m older than he received to be.

Despite the fact that the content material is organized by physique half moderately than chronology, Lichtenstein’s story is cohesive and entire. Although we glance by way of the lens of a component, we see a life properly lived. She navigates rising up, going by way of a divorce, and rising extra comfy with herself. Elements that perform as an entire are a privilege to be appreciated. Somewhat than fear about physique elements failing and giving out, Lichtenstein reveals by instance that our relationship to our elements modifications over time, and can be utilized to re-member:

It’s the generative partnership between physique and thoughts I  discover in these pages, as physique elements get a flip within the driver’s seat to steer me towards remembering… Let’s think about that to re-member — to carry collectively a physique of disparate recollections—is an try to collect and make entire that which has been dis-membered, damaged, or forgotten. The form of Physique: My Life in Elements resonates with  how our recollections are fashioned: by interconnected fragments  that talk with each other, construct upon each other.

And generously, in the back of the e book, Lichtenstein gives physique reminiscence writing prompts to assist a author on their very own journey of re-membering.