A different approach to aging
Lynn Bonney
Saturday, December 23, 2006
“I Feel Bad About My Neck,” by Nora Ephron, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, $19.95.
Any woman who approaches birthdays with a mixture of happiness, astonishment and dread will meet herself in Nora Ephron’s new book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”
Subtitled “And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,” the book is a wonderful antidote to the proliferation of writings that urge us to feel good about aging, advocating perkiness and positive attitudes — as if that will counteract the “maturing” process.
Ephron isn’t opposed to living, but she does have second thoughts, most of them zingingly on point, about getting older.
“Every so often,” she writes, “I read a book about age, and whoever is writing it says it’s great to be old. It’s great to be wise and sage and mellow; it’s great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can’t stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Don’t they have necks?”
A reader who doesn’t make an immediate connection with that remark hasn’t reached “a certain age,” a once-common term that could be interpreted as polite or catty, depending on the speaker.
“I Feel Bad About My Neck” is a bit like making an immediate connection with someone over lunch, a lunch that turns into afternoon drinks and lingers into the evening. It’s a quick read, with lots of smiles and knowing nods and a poignant parting with, perhaps, a few tears for absent friends.
Ephron moves skillfully from topic to topic, skewering hair dye, cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, eyeglasses and contact lenses, gym memberships, jowls and products that promise to stop — or at least slow — the march of time and opportunities missed.
Ephron writes: “One of my biggest regrets … bigger even than my worst romantic catastrophe — is that I didn’t spend my youth staring lovingly at my neck. It never crossed my mind to be grateful for it. It never crossed my mind that I would be nostalgic about a part of my body that I took completely for granted.”
Many women will recognize themselves in the chapter titled “I Hate My Purse.” Who hasn’t found a purse that seems to be perfect and then found herself intimidated by the nooks and crannies that were designed to keep everything neat? Who hasn’t vowed to keep that new purse neat and tidy, only to be swamped by 20 pounds of credit cards, lipsticks, notes and odd Tic Tacs?
Her solution to the Purse Problem? A plastic tote bag that goes with nothing (and conversely, with everything). Completely waterproof and absolutely wrong in any season, with any outfit.
Would that fellow purse-haters had Ephron’s courage to carry off that look! It’s something to strive for.
Eventually, Ephron turns to “The Alternative” to aging, a topic we don’t want to think too much about. We don’t know her friends, but we know her sense loss. She doesn’t leave readers laughing, but she does leave us hopeful.
What more could a reader want?
F Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”