Farewell, Nora

I have been reading Nora Ephron for as long as I can remember. She was an essayist for Esquire and I adored her. She was witty and sophisticated and the big sister I deserved. When I was in high school, she was living with Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame and hanging around with one of my great crushes, Robert (sigh) Redford, and one of my favorite authors, William Goldman as they all worked on All The President's Men. Her parents (Henry and Phoebe) actually kenw Tracy and Hepburn! It seemed too ambitious to want to be Nora Ephron. I just fantasized about hanging with her.

She went on to write books, and screenplays, and then to direct, and, being Nora, enjoyed success in each genre. I have seen all her movies and one of her plays (Love, Loss and What I Wore) and read all her books but the latest one. (It's too sad to call it her last.) But my favorite is Heartburn.

The movie is fine. But the book it's based on is better, as moving as it is funny. Here is my tribute to Nora -- her own words:


"I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being."

"And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream."

Today I feel like I lost a friend. I wish I'd known her and could have thanked her.