When I grow up, I want to be Nora Ephron.
One of my greatest (unintentionally) comedic moments was when I proudly proclaimed that I wanted to be a clown when I grew up in kindergarten. At the time I was attending a slightly over-monied private school in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. We were the only inter-racial family that I knew of at the time, and we almost had our membership rejected from the local country club because my father was (gasp!) Asian.
Anyway, you can imagine the dreams that our parents had already proudly planted into our minds by age five. I, Miss Minority, was probably meant to state the Asian equivalent of “world peace” at the Miss America pagent — “I want to be a doctor when I grow up so I can take care of my parents.”
I, however, was going to be a clown. I even drew a picture of myself as a clown in a book I made out of construction paper and cardboard boxes cut to size.
I liked the idea of making people laugh and smile. Was this due to a deep-seated need to feel needed? A recent journey to Cirque du Soleil? Or just a Buddha-esque mantra that life was meant to be enjoyed instilled through some DNA chain? My 26 year old self cannot recall what my 5 year old self was thinking, but I was sincere.
I still stand by my future career choice — but let me refine my definition and image of a “clown”.
Meet Nora Ephron: writer, cook, director, Wellesley alum, mother, wife and (I would argue) CLOWN. (She may disagree with my order of words here).
I do not mean that Nora Ephron dons a wig, big red nose, oversized shoes, and squirts water from a flower attached to her lapel. She has the great talent of helping people laugh at themselves. I roar with laughter when I read her articles/books or watch her movies.
She makes the unlikeliest things funny: divorce, alcoholic mothers, getting cheated on, faking orgasms. You name it and Nora Ephron will discover some way of depicting said topic in such a comical light, that even the most damaged, battered, and maligned among us with collapse to the floor in tears of humor.
A clown’s job is to make you laugh even when you’re in pain, even when the circumstances you find yourself in are excruciatingly awful. How is Nora Ephron NOT the embodiment of a class act clown?
If my 5 year old self had had the ability to comprehend the world that Nora Ephron illuminates with her witty prose, I am sure she would have drawn herself in some combination of dark pant, cashmere sweater, scarf and bifocals and proudly proclaimed, “I want to be Nora Ephron when I grow up.”
Need evidence of the Ephron-ness of Nora Ephron? Look no further.
- Divorce column for the Huffington Post
- Her time as a press intern in the JFK Administration and how an ill-timed permament wave is to blame for not getting hit on by JFK
- Interview with Salon on the release of her new book
- Newsweek Interivew on the things she will miss when she dies
Also, google her speech at Meryl Streep’s Lifetime Achievement Awards. You will not regret it.
