Jen is back and her book choice this week is a must-read for every woman over 40. It’s a disquietingly brilliant series of essays on the joys (or otherwise) of being female and aging. At the LymeLine office we are dominant in both characteristics, so this book was not only meaningful but also had us in fits of laughter, which, as Jen stresses, is a good thing … at our age!
Reading Amy a few weeks ago reminded me how much I like all of the Ephron sisters. Nora, who wrote the scripts for Sleepless In Seattle,Heartburn, and When Harry met Sally, among others is a riot.
I read a few books last week, but this one made me laugh out loud and in the bleak mid-winter we all need a good laugh.
Maybe when the birds are chirping I’ll get more serious. Really, isn’t the price of home heating oil morose enough for right now?
Let’s have a laugh that isn’t crazed and maniacal.
I Feel Bad About My Neck is a group of essays. Some previously published in tomes like Vogue and The New Yorker. Each one is funnily introspective. Nora discusses her life post middle age. She is over 60 and she thinks women who say, “This is YOUR time!” are crazy.
She is convinced her time was eons ago. I would not agree. She gets funnier. She mourns her youthful neck, her old apartment, her bad marriages, and her flat stomach. She celebrates her non-conforming purse, her cooking, her current neighborhood and her friendships.
Describing the gates-of-hell type scenario that is her purse had me staring into the void of my own with shuddering recognition. Why do they fill up so fast with items you could swear you didn’t even own? I have matchbox cars and reading glasses by the pound in mine. Unless, of course, I am actively looking for either one. Her wanderings around her apartment looking for glasses, keys and even a piece of cheese are a hoot.
My kids are still laughing about a dill pickle that went missing in our old house. Sorry Peter and Gerard …
Her essay on her “incident” with JFK and her essay on the amount of people and money it takes to keep her looking exactly one year younger than she is are equally classic.
Each essay is full of Ah-Ha moments of recognition. Even at 40 I can see where this neck issue is going to end up. I too should have worn a bikini for the entire year of 23. Hindsight is 20-20 ( … well, when the eyes are working) and Ephron makes you appreciate the parts of life that inevitably change.
Wherever you are on the great Age Ladder you should stop and smell those proverbial roses. Who knows what ravages time will bring? If we can keep laughing, it will all be fine.