Thoughts on Julia Child

I just got back from seeing the movie "Julie and Julia." It was one of the cutest movies I've seen in a long time.

I remember seeing snippets of Julia Child's cooking show growing up, and laughing hysterically when Saturday Night Live would do a parody of her on their show. She could make even the most uncoordinated and clumsy person feel graceful! I didn't realize how tall she was!

She began cooking because she loved food and needed something to occupy her time while her husband worked. She enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, where she was the only female in a world dominated by men. She became very competitive and excelled in class. Her attitude was great to watch--she almost thrived on someone telling her that she couldn't do something.

While I'm no Julia Child, I was able to see some parallels in my own life. I am a female high school band director--which is rare. I think there are only five or six of us in the entire state. I, too, seem to thrive when someone tells me I can't do something. It's like I enjoy doing things anyway--just to spite them. I'm also pretty competitive, but don't tell Gordon that! (Especially when we play cards...)

At one point in the movie, Julia's sister gets married and becomes pregnant right away. When Julia (who had been married for several years and unable to have children) learned of the pregnancy, she cried...and then said, "I really am happy." You could see the disappointment and hurt on her face.

This was poignant to me, as I felt the same way when I found out my sister-in-law was pregnant after only being married a short time. Gordon and I had been waiting for five years for a child, and she was married less than six months! It hardly seemed fair, and I remember crying and crying about it. I didn't know it at the time, but Gordon had found out earlier that day that we'd been chosen to be Ian's parents. He let me suffer--the goof!

Throughout it all, Julia kept a great attitude. She maintained a fighter's attitude and never gave up, even when she'd ruin a perfectly good dish on national TV. She'd find a way to learn from it while at the same time teaching us all to learn from her mistakes. What a lesson to me. When life gives me issues to deal with, I need to look at them as learning opportunities rather than trials. I know we're sent here to deal with those issues, and I know we'll be judged on how we deal with them.

If Julia Child can deal with a ruined omelet on national TV, surely I can deal with whatever can come my way.