The Things I Miss, and the Things I Don't

Inspired by Nora Ephron, I'm taking inventory on the good and the bad of the way things were.

The late, great Nora Ephron. Photo via HBO

I’ve been on a little bit of a Nora Ephron kick lately, combing through her essay collections I Remember Nothing and I Feel Bad About My Neck for the second time. When I first discovered Ephron’s’s writing in 2009, I had just moved to New York for college with a resolve to become a magazine writer. My peers in journalism class picked up Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, and the rest of the Great Magazine Writers, but Ephron was more my speed: she was smart but not boastful, skeptical but not cynical, and intelligent but not pretentious. You don’t even have to be a writer (or a reader, for that matter) to appreciate her work; she gave us screenplays for gems like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Julie and Julia. When she passed away in 2012, I felt like I’d genuinely lost a close friend, and I think that speaks to her writing style. Even if the topic was, for example, vaginal douches, Ephron always invited her readers in, as though you and her were about to have a nice, long-but-not-too-long chat. Her endless allusions to food only made her writing more seductive, like she was talking to you while preparing a beautiful, warm meal for you to eat together. If I were ever asked the question of who, dead or alive, I could enjoy a meal with, Ephron would be up there on my list—right next to Beyoncé and my grandmother. (My cats Freddy and Juniper would have to be there too, ideally eating out of beautiful, crystal bowls…but I digress.)

Two simply titled lists of Ephron’s appear back-to-back at the very end of I Remember Nothing: “What I Won’t Miss” and “What I Will Miss.” She wrote both while she was sick with cancer and reflecting on her life. Among the things she wouldn’t miss before departing? Clarence Thomas, bills, dead flowers, and bras. What she would miss: Reading in bed, Paris, walking in the park, and her kids. Reading and re-reading her lists, I kept searching for a pattern I could follow. There didn’t appear to be a discernible rhyme or reason to what she put down on the paper, but somehow, it still hit me in all the right ways, made me imagine and wonder and feel grateful. In that way, these lists were distinctly, perfectly Ephron. 

It’s a powerful thing to take inventory of our lives, whether we’re facing a terminal illness, a personal crisis, or even a windfall of success. So many of us extol the virtues of gratitude journals; brief little lists of things they’re grateful for which they commit to paper every single day. You’d be surprised at what actually hits the page and what happens when you take the time to acknowledge the things that make you happy. I, for one, am grateful for the way my fiancé insists on cuddling with me every night, even though I put up a big stink about not wanting to be cuddled. It makes me smile when he eventually reaches over and yanks me towards him. I recognize that I’m grateful—for the cuddle, sure—but also for him. 

What I love about Ephron’s example is that she takes the overly earnest part of gratitude out of the equation. By first taking stock of what she wouldn’t miss, she delivered a compelling list of the things she would. It’s easy to note the way her tone shifts from critical to sentimental. She gets down to the smallest details of what makes her happy and captures a relatively full image of her life in so few words. 

Our coronavirus-induced quarantine is an excellent time to take inventory. A friend of mine refers to our lives pre-social distancing as “The Before Times,” and I think that’s apt. Some ask when things will reopen or “go back to normal,” not realizing that they’re missing the bigger picture. There is no snapping of fingers that will allow us to instantly live the way we once did. But maybe if we take inventory of our lives, past and present, we might see that all of this doesn’t have to be for the worse. While I’m wary of the trap of “pandemic productivity” and all of the privileges associated with taking this moment to focus on oneself, I also think we have, in the words of Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, a moral obligation to emerge from this experience with our eyes opened to injustice and the ways in which we were not helpful—to ourselves and to others. 

In the spirit of Nora Ephron (who I hope will not read this from heaven as I can imagine she has a very discerning eye) I made a list of the things I do and do not miss from “The Before Times.” If you feel so compelled to make your own, I’d love to read it! You can drop your lists in the comments, or DM them to me on social media. With your permission, I’d love to share what you wrote. And as always, I would like to kindly suggest that, if you feel compelled to buy one of the books I mentioned, you do so by placing an order at your local bookstore. (If you don’t have one in mind, may I suggest Marcus Books? They are the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the country, and are taking orders!)

Tonight, I’ll be watching Everything Is Copy, the documentary about Ephron on HBO. If you’d like to join me, you can find me (probably crying) on my Instagram Story. In the meantime, here’s my inventory.

What I Miss and What I Don’t:

Don’t Miss: Setting an alarm
Miss: The danger of hitting “snooze” 

Don’t Miss: Feeling guilty for sleeping in
Miss: Being able to sleep through the night

Don’t Miss: The feeling of Monday mornings
Miss: The feeling of Sunday mornings

Don’t Miss: The idea that I don’t cook enough
Miss: When cooking was fun

Don’t Miss: Hangovers
Miss: Hangover bagels

Don’t Miss: Feeling like I “should” be at the gym
Miss: Seeing “progress”

Don’t Miss: Putting on makeup every day
Miss: Wanting to look good for any reason

Don’t Miss: Spending too much money on clothing
Miss: Pulling together “a look”

Don’t Miss: People who carry large umbrellas when it rains
Miss: Wearing my favorite raincoat

Don’t Miss: Packed subway cars
Miss: The untapped genius of subway performers

Don’t Miss: Rush hour
Miss: When the city felt alive

Don’t Miss: Walking behind couples who hold hands on narrow sidewalks
Miss: Holding my fiancé’s hand while walking down the sidewalk

Don’t Miss: Weaving through tourists in SoHo
Miss: People watching

Don’t Miss: The smell of a stranger’s bad breath
Miss: Seeing people’s mouths

Don’t Miss: Running late
Miss: Making an entrance

Don’t Miss: Offices
Miss: A workspace that isn’t my sofa

Don’t Miss: “Would love to pick your brain over coffee!”
Miss: Oat-milk lattés

Don’t Miss: Small talk
Miss: Brunch table antics

Don’t Miss: 12-hour workdays
Miss: Coming home after a 12-hour workday

Don’t Miss: Trying to get to “inbox zero”
Miss: E-mails about things other than coronavirus

Don’t Miss: “We need to hang out soon!”
Miss: “It was really good to see you.”

Don’t Miss: Panel discussions
Miss: Gossiping about the people on the panel

Don’t Miss: FOMO 
Miss: “Want to hang out tonight?”

Don’t Miss: Handshakes
Miss: Hugs

Don’t Miss: “Just come out for one drink!”
Miss: Having exactly one glass of champagne

Don’t Miss: “But it’s my birthday week!”
Miss: Birthday parties

Don’t Miss: Scrambling to make a last-minute reservation for 10 people
Miss: Going out to eat with my friends

Don’t Miss: When all my friends start roasting me at the function
Miss: Roasting my friends at the function

Don’t Miss: Feeling obligated to attend multiple things in one night
Miss: Having anywhere to go

Don’t Miss: Seeing group photos of Instagays at Coachella
Miss: Taking group photos with my friends at Fashion Week

Don’t Miss: The people I unfollowed for not following social distancing guidelines
Miss: Their likes and comments

Don’t Miss: Ordering compulsively on Amazon Prime
Miss: McNally Jackson and Books Are Magic bookstores

Don’t Miss: The Democratic presidential primary
Miss: Hope

Don’t Miss: Anyone who supported Bloomberg for President
Miss: Not knowing which of my friends identify as “Cuomosexual”

Don’t Miss: Feeling like there’s too much to do
Miss: Having anything to do

Don’t Miss: My mother begging me to come home to Boston 
Miss: Seeing my mother

Don’t Miss: Airplanes
Miss: Planning a vacation

Don’t Miss: The Twitter discourse about reclining seats on an airplane
Miss: When that seemed like something worth arguing about

Don’t Miss: The pressure to finally plan my damn wedding
Miss: The idea of having a wedding anytime in the near future

Don’t Miss: My nine shirtless, dirty nephews screaming about Roblox
Miss: That point in the night where they all get tired and want to cuddle

Don’t Miss: Taking my family for granted
Miss: Thinking they’d be around forever

Don’t Miss: The mess our cat makes whenever we leave her alone for a weekend
Miss: When she was excited to see us come home

Don’t Miss: Being too busy to keep track of Darien’s schedule in the ER
Miss: When I could kiss him right after he got home from the hospital

Don’t Miss: The way things were
Miss: Not being afraid