“I am so sorry I didn’t pursue a career. In the end it is meaningful work—serving people—that matters most. It is what we are made for.” — Miriam B. Reichl
I stumbled onto Ruth Reichl (RYE-shell) browsing the stacks at my local library. Her voice captured me, her stories engaged me. One by one, I read her memoirs
August and September are months when I listen to audio books by the dozen while I put up food from the garden. I was delighted to rediscover Ruth Reichl and quickly downloaded Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
Reichl interprets her mother’s life through the lens of family letters and private notes found after her mom’s death. Miriam (“Mim”) was remarkable: got a PhD in music from Paris when she was nineteen, opened a bookshop in her twenties, formed friendships with famous authors, critics, musicians. Thwarted from becoming a physician, told that she was too homely to attract a husband, bereaved of her sister, a disappointment to her parents, she carries an “unhappiness that is palpable”, sits through years of psychotherapy, tries pharmacotherapy, alienates her kids, spirals into deep depression.
Mim’s misery, Reichl insists, stems from the fact that she lacked a career. In the fifties she was one of the smart, competent women twiddling their thumbs. She hated housework, was a dangerous cook, lived in chaos. Out of her extraordinary generosity, the best gift she gave her daughter was permission to defy her. Well, now.
While the sadness clings, I just don’t buy the message. My opinion? Mim was miserable. If she had had a career she still would have been an unhappy career woman.
I applaud when Ruth Reichl in another context says “I don’t think there’s one thing more important you can do for your kids than have family dinner.” But she strikes out with this book.
A Living Pencil 
I think I have read all of Ruth Reichl’s books and this was my least favorite. I do love to read about foodies and have other authors that I like better than Reichl. Laurie Colwin is a really good one.
love and prayers, jep
jep, thanks for the comment. Home Cooking is on my unread shelf. I will move it closer to the top of the pile.
Trying to psychoanalyze one’s own mother, posthumously I suppose, does seem like a particularly hubristic and fruitless endeavor. I suppose it was too tempting, since the author herself suffered along with her mother. I too doubt whether a simple career would have been a cure.
It feels like Reichl is trying to make sense of her mom’s life. But it is overreaching to make saintliness from her mom giving her permission to rebel.