Tag Archives: Nora Ephron

Practicing Speech and Speaking of Religion in Our House

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Gbot: “Now I have all my cards, so I am ready to go.” Mbot: “Now we are pretty like you, Mom.”

I’m thinking that if our revolutionary brothers had just broken into the queen’s powder room and stolen her lipstick and credit cards two hundred and forty-four years ago, she might have laughed and said, “You go, boys.” Of course, her credit limit was substantially higher than mine, so maybe not.

Due to things like pinatas (Mbot’s) and death (Nora’s), I’ve been neglecting to share stories of daily life and conversations in our household. And so, in celebration of American Independence, I will briefly wallow here in the splendor of the rights provided by Amendment One of the Constitution of the United States as practiced in our house. (If you need a refresher, here it is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In our household, although I wish we assembled peacefully more often, and although often a redress of grievances results in a time out anyway, we take full advantage of our other rights. On Sunday, Mbot asked, about Nora Ephron, “Does she have a ladder so she can climb down from Heaven?”

I was able to reply, without breaking any laws: ”Moon Pie, every essay she wrote and movie she made is a rung in that ladder.”

And this morning, from the breakfast table:

Mbot: “I’m NOT going to marry you, Gbot.”

Gbot: “But you HAVE to marry me.”

Mbot: “I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Ybot.”

Although it’s still illegal–in the U.S. for one good reason, in the state of Arizona for one bad reason–at least they won’t get thrown in the stocks for talking about it.

Later,  when I told Mbot we WERE going to the Y, whether he wanted to or not: ”You’re a bad mommy. I don’t like you.”

Instead of getting tossed in the dungeon, he got a hug. Although we went to the Y anyway.

I do admit to cronyism with my biggest corporate affiliate (Husbot), and I know I get it wrong sometimes. But I’d like to think I’m a kind and benevolent dictator with the best interests of my subjects at the fore. The U.S. government gets a LOT wrong. (Don’t get me started. There is a reason this is a mommyblog, not a political blog.) But it gets a lot right, too.

Here’s to US.

Dear Nora,

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Nora Ephron. Photo by Elena Seibert on tumblr

I will miss you.

In today’s New York Times obit, Meryl Streep is quoted as calling you “stalwart.” Stalwart is something I’ve never been.

You weren’t a whiner.

I am.

I don’t like that about myself, but obviously not enough to make great inroads into changing. Husbot bears the brunt of it. But this is not a whiny post. This is about how you affected–and still affect–my life.

I remember when Mbot was six months old and I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, that I came upon a profile of you in The New Yorker. For a couple of months after reading the profile, I sucked it up. I kept my mouth shut when I wanted to whine. I looked on the bright side. I had more confidence in myself. I didn’t mind making enemies for the sake of saying something I believed. Yet at the same time I attempted to be more diplomatic.

Then we moved (down twenty-one stairs, without professional movers, in the summer in Pheonix, eight months pregnant with a fifteen month-old on my hip–sorry, am I whining?), and the article got buried in a pile of other New Yorker articles I’d ripped out and put in a folder to take with us, and I forgot about it. I gave birth again, lost sleep in a box-filled apartment to not only a hungry infant but to a howling one year-old; I forgot to not whine, to look on the bright side, to have confidence, to be diplomatic. I had my sense of humor, but it works better somehow in the company of those other things.

It is time–past time–to read that profile again.

But since it is not at my fingertips, and since quiet time in my house has failed to result in a nap for the two year-old (the almost four year-old finally fell asleep, in spite of the midget Cirque du Soleil on the next bed), my blogging time allowance may end at any moment, shifting you to stage left and the weebots to front and center. In fact I am right now typing to the chant, “Please give me a cookie,” which, however polite, is distracting. And so I will just briefly mention three points in the profile that stayed with me.

# 1

You were married three times, divorced twice. You obviously weren’t afraid to try, and fail. You turned your divorce into a best-selling novel (Heartburn)–and not only a best-seller but a funny, self-deprecating, insightful, vivid story about womanhood, marriage, pregnancy, professional life, and motherhood. You felt like a failure, as a woman, and as a wife, but you wrote about it, bravely and with humor. I am not planning a divorce, but there are things other than my husband that aren’t working out so well, that I would like to walk away from.

Like my whining. Some might say it’s a symptom: a symptom of my need to communicate honestly; of my children who no longer nap regularly; or of the fact that I am living in Phoenix in the summertime. But that symptom is f**cking with my life.

Honest communication is great, but so is strength of character. And if I were a character in my own book, would I admire me?

Not when I was whining.

#2

You were taught by your alcoholic screenwriter parents that everything in your life is material for your writing. I always felt that was true about mine, but often lacked the conviction to jot things down on the spot. Although I was the first junior high student in Juneau, Alaska, to wear legwarmers, a bandana around my head, and a cropped t-shirt, when it came to real life, I was afraid of doing the unexpected. My floor might as well have been cold, hard, Mexican ceramic tile for all the times I made love on it. Reading that you and your writer sisters embraced this way of seeing your lives–as material–strengthened my courage to do the unexpected, even if it was only ignoring snickers when I whipped out my notebook or took notes on my arm during events or conversations that others deemed unremarkable. Being true to my need to document the ordinary has a temporary effect of whine-quelling.

#3

You have two grown sons whose absence in the tabloids leads me to suspect they are fairly well adjusted. As a mother of two sons myself, I know this is part their doing, part yours. I would like my own sons to grow up with a mother who can lead by example in the nonwhining department. But it is too late to send them to you. And so I will just have to buck up.

In an essay of yours that appeared in The New Yorker not long after I read the profile, titled “My Life as an Heiress,” you wrote about how you were working on a screeplay at the time you received an inheritance from some long lost relative. You mentioned that you remember the screenplay was “‘really, really hard.’” The sum of the inheritance was debated among family members, and estimated to be quite large. You had some expensive landscaping done to your house in the Hamptons. You fantasized about retiring to a life of leisure.

When the money finally came, it was something like $5,000. I think it barely paid for the landscaping. You finished the screenplay because you suddenly really needed the money. You pointed out that it was a good thing you didn’t retire right then and there, because the screenplay you were working on–the one that was “‘really, really hard,’” was When Harry Met Sally. Which, in spite of its lack of Oscars wins, is probably–among women between forty and fifty–the most quoted and widely referenced movie I know. Still, today, over twenty years later.

I shouldn’t whine, even when things are really, really hard. You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.

I want to just suck it up and turn it into material. I want to have the confidence in myself to leave behind what isn’t working and try something new. I want to have the confidence in myself to believe I am trying hard enough. Or if, in fact, I’m not, to recognize and remedy it: read more, write more, seek a mentor, seek an audience, seek the quiet time I need. I want the longterm perspective to see past this tired day and draw strength from knowing that I will not always be this tired, this constantly needed, emotionally and physically. And also to appreciate that as long as I am needed, I’ve got job security.

I want to be braver, more confident, more persistent, and more stalwart. Even if it’s really, really hard.

I want what you’re having. But with the dead part on the side.

5,000 Miles With 40,000 Pounds of Frozen Broccoli and My Dad

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All broccoli appears harmless. (www.wikiality.wikia.com)

It is easier to tell what’s wrong with someone else’s work than what’s wrong with your own. I have spent several years editing, first cookbooks, then engineering proposals for potato processing plants. This week I received a manuscript draft from one of my favorite writers, former newspaper reporter Sarah Wolfgang, who’s now teaching English at Barry University. She’s writing a book with the working title Freakin’ Streakin’, about spending two weeks in a long haul refer truck with her dad, and how she got there. Here’s an excerpt:

I spotted Dad organizing sugar packets at a window table.

“So what’s goin’ on with you?” I asked, dropping into the waiting, empty chair. He patted the last packet into the container and shook his head. “Man, I totally f—ed up.”

“Why? What?”

“Well …Y’know that Darth Vader email attachment I’ve sent you before?”

Darth Vader: Your powers are weak, old man.

Ben (Obi-wan) Kenobi: You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

“Yeah. Well, I sent my résumé to about a half a dozen places and accidentally attached it.”

“’You serious?” I said, shaking my head. I glanced out the window but saw the hovering coffee pot approaching and flipped my mug. “Guess this means I’ll be buying us breakfast for a while then, huh?”

It did. Of course it was a shitty thing to have happened, but it was also a great f—ing story to tell. I think I was even a little jealous that it hadn’t happened to me.

And there you have it, the sign of a natural-born storyteller. You wish something bad had happened to you. Because every event is grist for the mill, chaff to be turned into wafers for the Eucharist.

Nora Ephron’s parents were both screenwriters, and she was raised thinking of everything that happened around her as material.

I am no Nora Ephron, and I was raised by a surgeon and a former operating room nurse. It was with eyes darting sideways that I surreptitiously took notes of whatever drama unfolded around me. Sometimes I still feel uncomfortable scribbling in a notebook. I am not in a war zone. I am not on the staff of The New York Times. But if broccoli can be cryovacked, move through space at 75 miles-per-hour, and achieve a tasty afterlife, then surely there is hope for the detritus of daily life.

It’s all in the packaging.

How do you transcend yourself?