Reflections on the Journey

"I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections" by Nora Ephron includes essays and tidbits on topics such as being divorced, email, eating habits, her start in journalism, and memory loss. The book ends with two lists - "What I Won't Miss" and "What I Will Miss." After finishing the book I discovered that Ephron had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2006, four years before publishing this book in 2010. She died two years later, June 2012. She was five years older than I am.

One of my favorite essays dealt with her start in journalism. She explained the cultural assumptions and restrictions about what women could and couldn't do in the 1960s. There was a structure, a career path, for men and a different one for women.

Ephron graduated from Wellesley in 1962 and went to New York City to be a journalist. She got a job at Newsweek. She was told by the employment agency that women didn't become writers at Newsweek. "It would never have crossed my mind to object, or to say, 'You're going to turn out to be wrong about me.' It was a given in those days that if you were a woman and you wanted to do certain things, you were going to have to be the exception to the rule." (page 17) She was hired as a "mail girl" for $55 a week.  "There were no mail boys at Newsweek, only mail girls. If you were a college graduate (like me) who had worked on your college newspaper (like me) and you were a girl (like me), they hired you as a mail girl. If you were a boy (unlike me) with exactly the same qualifications, they hired you as a reporter and sent you to a bureau somewhere in America. This was unjust but it was 1962, so it was the way things were." (page 18-19)

Our daughters and granddaughters hopefully won't ever encounter anything as blatant as this. I think it's important for them to know how much has changed in a relatively short period of time.

After I read the book, did some searching to find out more about Ephron, and discovered she had a terminal illness when she wrote the book, I reread the lists enumerating what she would and wouldn't miss. I thought about what I'd put on my lists. We don't have unlimited time here on earth. I am thankful to know that our journey continues on the other side of the veil.

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