FOR MY DEAR MISS NORA EPHRON

i owe so much of the good parts of my life to a writer named nora ephron.

i moved across the country the summer before my junior year of high school. a month into my first semester at my new school, i turned sixteen. i was heartsick for home and lonely. my mom baked a cake and my sisters made birthday cards out of construction paper and i blew out the candles in the dining room while my dad was away at work. it was a lovely birthday, but i missed my friends. 

that friday, two girls i'd been tentatively sitting with at lunch, the cutest girls you'd ever meet in your life, invited me out of the blue to go see a movie. when they found out it was my birthday that weekend, they bought me a gift--a leopard print purse that i carried through college until holes showed through the sides. they picked me up saturday afternoon and while riding in allyson's little white volkswagen golf it occurred to me that i was in the middle of a miracle. everything was going to be okay. i was making friends--though they strangers really--who genuinely seemed to care for me. i was going to be fine. i started to grin and relax. the skies got somehow sunnier.

the movie they took me to see was you've got mail.

i watch you've got mail any time i need a reminder that the world is a beautiful place. because it is. it is, but it isn't. and nobody knew that better than nora.

i think the thing about nora is, she was not afraid to be a woman. her strengths as a writer, her characters' strengths, all come from the fact that they are unapologetically girls. sally with the hair spray in the car in the parking lot of the diner, annie and her over-watched copy of an affair to remember, marie and her rolodex full of dateable men, kathleen and her daisies. nora's women are soft but that doesn't mean they aren't strong. why don't more people see femininity the way she did? nora's girls aren't like men and they don't care to be. why would they? frankly, it's refreshing and inspiring. i'm so sad to see that brilliant spark of feminism missing now that she's gone.

there is a scene in julie & julia, where julia and paul are walking through paris. julia pauses mid sentence to watch a woman pushing a stroller the opposite direction. you see her just briefly waver, then collect herself up, leaning a little on her husband as she sorts her pieces back together. later julia gets a letter from her sister announcing she is expecting a baby, and she kind of crumples against the kitchen counter as she reads. those scenes. i was in the middle of the worst of my struggles to get pregnant when i saw that movie the first time, and those scenes meant everything to me. somehow nora understood exactly what i was going through. that's how i know nora was the real deal.

i am a total product of the nora ephron. apart from my mother and my crazy granny goose, this woman has had the single biggest influence on shaping who i am and how i see myself as a woman. i think a little bit like maybe nora ephron was my fairy god mother. on my best of days, i like to imagine i am living in a nora ephron movie of my own. maybe even on my worst of days, too.

so, dear nora, thank you. thank your. thank you for your movies. thank you for writing strong female characters who aren't afraid to be females. thank you for recognizing the quiet power in a daisy.

H&G, sister.

nora's influence has made this blog countless of times

some of my favorites: 

here

here

here

here

here

and

here