Older, Wiser, Better

Jul

ie and Julia is an enjoyable, light-hearted movie with several things going for it. There are strong performances, compelling characters, and a talented writer/director - Nora Ephron who, despite some missteps along the way, has held my allegiance since I saw When Harry Met Sally in 1989. The secret sauce, though, is the life of Julia Child, luminously portrayed by Meryl Streep.

Before this movie (and the press surrounding it) I knew of Julia Child merely as a very tall, yodel-voiced, easily mockable PBS chef, whose recipes would clog your arteries simply by reading them. I didn't know about her fascinating life that started in Pasadena, California and took her all over the world as an OSS agent before marrying her devoted husband, Paul. I knew nothing about her passionate marriage, her influence on American cooking, or her role as a cultural icon.

I am struck by the way Julia found her professional calling by combining her interests, her talents, and her hard work without sacrificing her family life. With her husband's support -- and apparently a lot of nooners -- she was able to pursue both a happy home and a fulfilling career -- a career that transforming her passion for food into a vocation.

The hardest step is probably the first one: finding one's passion.

Julia Child didn't find her calling until she was lucky and wise enough to recognize it; she was a late bloomer. She arrived in France at age 37 following her marriage and foreign service. Searching for a pastime, she tried several hobbies before enrolling in a cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu academy in Paris. An ardent admirer of French cuisine and a natural teacher, she sought to bring French cooking to "servantless American cooks," and with two friends wrote her masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Ten years in the making, it was published in 1961, and her American television show premiered the following year, when she was 49 years old.

A few fortunate people know what they want to be when they grow up at an early age. I am the roughly the same age that Julia was when she arrived in France, and I'm only just getting a vague sense of it. Being this age provides the perspective, financial comfort (it's hard to wax philosophical when you're working three jobs to pay the rent), and self awareness needed to steer (nudge?) our lives in the right direction. After this long I know what makes me tick and what I never get tired of. Over time, infatuations fall away (whither thou, worm composting?) and the list narrows itself: I love to teach, perform, (try to) be funny, communicate, eat, and solve problems.

With any luck I'll soon solidify my list and move on to step two, Implementation -- I'll figure out how to get my career more in synch with these passions. Shouldn't take more than another forty years or so...

Julia Child's inspiring life represents the alchemical potential of combining passion with profession. Her life points out that when we combine our wisdom, experience, talents, and hard work, we may be just getting started.

Despite what you read in magazines and see in most movies, opportunity doesn't end at age twenty-five anymore. It never really did.