Bless you, Nora Ephron. Thank you, Karen Heller, for the right word at the right time.

Millions of women were devoted fans of movies, plays and essays by Nora Ephron, who died last week. Among them were thousands of women writers, who revered Ephron's work and found themselves breathless and shocked when it was announced that she had endured a long, undisclosed illness. Her fans knew she was in the midst of writing a new Broadway play, in fact.

In today's Sunday Inquirer, senior columnist Karen Heller wrote her appreciation and a brief memoir of meeting Nora Ephron. If you're like me and love reading these memory pieces, I didn't want you to miss it. Or a knock-out piece by young writing/directing phenom Lena Dunham, of HBO's "Girls."

I will never have a chance to publicly thank Nora Ephron. I hope that this Patch column gives me the chance to thank Karen Heller for nailing the exact word to remember Nora Ephron, for me and countless other women writers.

Dear Karen,

Just an admiring note from a subscriber, reading your Sunday essay about Nora Ephron in the actual newspaper, in my bathrobe on the porch while it's early --- before the July 1st humidity melts the Inky onto my hands:

A lot has been written in the last few days and much of it overlaps, because that's the truth of it: a generation (or two) of creative women shared experiences shaped by Nora Ephron. And, as a person who is jealous of all of the women who actually got to meet and know her, I've tried to Google all of their memoirs this week to pick up on individual insights.  

So I loved when you nailed a word that nobody else has written about Ephon. You said she was the lodestar. I had to look it up, because I felt it was the magic word that nobody else had used. I'm glad I looked it up.*

My online dictionary said the lodestar is Polaris ..the guiding star. Yes. That is an exact definition of how she led the women like us.  But I was snagged on the word lode and, reading further, that was actually the part I had most responded to. I realized, I was thinking about lodestones, which are magnetic metals.  And that's what Nora Ephron specifically was for me. A substantial, active, invisible force in my here and now.  Till last Wednesday. And it took my breath away to realize that.

As somebody who is not "a feminist in pearls", as you write of Ephron, but is a feminist in Talbots, I'm a functional dresser who never got into or nor could relate to the "What I Wore" side of Ephron's popular writing. Too girly-girl for my personal tastes, though I recognized how those wry insights were so enthralling for others. And as somebody who is perpetually dieting, I could never allow myself to relate to her appetites and her delight in eating rich things. Even reading that stuff seemed like a risky temptation to me.

But she was always magnetic to me, in spite of our lifestyle differences. And her presence in the scene of arts, letters, pop culture  --- going all the way back to her Esquire writing which I devoured on the train while I was commuting to Temple U in the 70's --- was truly a powerful force, a resource in my own creative life. I knew, through her success, that I also had a right to pursue a singular vision. Though it was tempting to imagine, I realized I not only couldn't, but shouldn't try to replicate her New Yorky life in Philadelphia. But I could own my personal take on things and publish it fearlessly, through channels that were here in Philadelphia and in my grasp. And so I did.

While I'm envious you got to meet Nora Ephron and blurt out your "I love you," I'm so glad you wrote about it in today's paper. You blurted it out for all of us.  I am so happy she sent that thank-you notecard to you. We can all daydream now, through you, that we'd get the same.  

I will close with a referral to one of the most striking memory pieces I found and it's all the more amazing because it is long and detailed, although clearly cranked out in a hurry, as it was published about a day after Nora Ephron died. It's a New Yorker blogpost by the HBO "Girls" phenom, Lena Dunham and it's great. I sent it right after finding it to my friend Nora, who is a director at CBS in New York, and she wrote back 15 minutes later that it made her cry. If you haven't seen it, you may enjoy it too...possibly with a Kleenex or two at the ready.

Thanks, Karen, for the great word lodestar. Now that she's in heaven, I'll use YOUR word to think of Nora Ephron and how she's still guiding me. 

Liz Matt
Cinnaminson, NJ

*Marilyn Lois Pollack once did an Inky piece on me, back in my TV hosting days, and asked if there was something about me that the public didn't know. I told her I kept a dictionary in every room of my house, which was true. Then. Now, with my iPad at my side, I have a dictionary in two rooms only, but a whole library within inches at all times. In twenty years, nothing's changed but the packaging.