Taryn Stickrath-Hutt

THE JULIA MILESTONE

For many, many years, I’ve struggled with hyper-curiosity.  It’s a blessing and a curse, since it’s nearly impossible for me to find just one thing on which to focus.  My personal library is the best example of this, as the titles on my bookshelves run the gamut from Ancient Egyptian history to classical painting to tarot reading to Old Hollywood biographies.  Of course, I have quite the collection of cookbooks as well.  And (depending on my mood) I am equally passionate about all of them.

 Being a “Jill of All Trades,” I’ve always envied those people who are driven toward a singular goal.  You know those people.  They were interested in a subject in high school, quickly chose their major in college, and pursued a career.  I changed college majors about 8 times, have a patchwork (but impressive!) resume, and in a matter of days can wholeheartedly decide on a new career and then wholeheartedly change my mind.  I don’t view my knowledge as “a mile wide, inch deep.”  It’s more like a swirling universe of concentric, deeply researched topics, all moving at the same time.

The only consistent element is this damn curiosity.  It’s what killed the cat.  But it’s also what kills the feeling that I might ever find my “one true calling.”

Julia Child ended up in Paris at 36 and enrolled in formal cooking classes at 37.  Her first cookbook, the epic tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking, wasn’t published until she was 49.  She started her acclaimed TV show at 51.  She was a late bloomer and similarly frustrated with her lack of direction before finding her culinary raison d’être. But boy, when she found it…

Because of my great admiration for Julia and the commonalities I see in our stories, I’ve spent years thinking, “I’ll figure it out when I’m 37.  That’s when my raison will appear to me.”

Today is my 37th birthday.*  While it’s not exactly what I pictured – in quarantine, on furlough from work, experiencing a very necessary uprising in America – these circumstances haven’t diminished the milestone.  And they haven’t distracted from my love for Julia.

*June, 2020

Julia McWilliams was born and raised in Pasadena, not far from where I sit now.  Her affluent family was quite conservative, and she always felt like an outsider.  While she had plenty of friends and fun, she knew she wasn’t destined for the Pasadena debutante scene.  She ached for adventure.

After college, she “was going to be a great woman novelist.”  She forayed into the world of New York advertising as a copywriter, but it didn’t prove to be a career.  When the U.S. joined the fight in WWII, she got a job in the Office of Strategic Services.  Though she was privy to Top Secret information, she described her work as largely clerical and focused on the organization of documents (I can relate).  That’s where she met Paul.  They progressed from friends to lovers over several delicious meals in China.  They married in 1946 (about 15 years after her debutante contemporaries wore white).

After the war, Julia accompanied Paul on his assignments as he continued in government work.  In 1948, he was assigned to Paris.  Dieu merci.

In her book, My Life in France, she describes herself as an “unserious Californian” landing at Le Havre with the serious and familiar doubt about whether she’d fit in.  All she knew of the country was what she had seen in Vogue and movies, or what she’d heard from her “taciturn” father (who had never been to Europe but was convinced it was terrible).  How would this six-foot-two woman with a big personality blend into a landscape of “dainty, exquisitely coiffed” women and “dandies who twirled their mustaches, pinched girls, and schemed against American rubes”?

As it turned out, quite well, because life is not like the pages of Vogue or movies with Adolphe Menjou.  With this change of scenery, she discovered a completely different lifestyle, a world of lovely people, and lots of food.

While my Francophilia seems the obvious connection with Julia, the curiosity is what really binds me to her.  She had to know all about the oysters.  Or how to tell a good potato from a bad one.  Or how the woman at the crémerie gauged the readiness of a Camembert by pressing it with her thumbs and sniffing it.  There was just so much to learn, and she was an eager student.

This eagerness doesn’t always stick with me.  I’ve often bemoaned my inability to commit to anything for long.  It’s not out of disinterest or boredom.  It’s simply a matter of fact – there are so many fascinating paths in the world, how could I pick just one?

As I started counting down to “ The Julia Milestone of 37,” I was forced into some heavy self-reflection.  In the past month (while pondering my lack of raison), I’ve made lists of the things I’m most passionate about, recalled my childhood dreams, started reading 8 different books, and revisited an unfinished screenplay. I even took an online aptitude test meant for graduating high-schoolers, just in case I missed something 20 years ago.

I finished writing the screenplay.  I finished reading one book.  I didn’t feel any closer to a singular raison, viewing it through the filter of “career.”

There is something to be said about the filters we put on our own self-reflections.  And how those filters can damage the image.  As I think about Julia, it’s easy to skip ahead to her success.  It’s simple for me to make the jump from cooking classes at 37 to cookbooks and TV shows and world-renown.  But obviously, that wasn’t the case while she was living it.  She wasn’t always successful or confident or published.

Julia mastered a craft because she loved it.  She persevered through years of false starts.  She never – in her wildest dreams – thought her curiosity in the good potatoes and Camembert would lead to a place in the cultural pantheon.  Yes, she had financial stability through these trials with her husband’s support, but I truly believe that she would’ve found a way to make it work without a dime.

I have plenty of interests that I could pursue if we all weren’t so obsessed with turning them into “a living.”  Sure, I have to pay the bills.  But how much weight do those bills carry in my pursuit of the raison?  While I appreciate the Oprah-isms of “find what you love and make it your job,” statements like this inherently taint artistic inspiration with that career filter. Why must our interests be monetizable or else deemed a waste of time?

Unfiltered thinking is what brought me back to Madame Paprika. I don’t do it because it’s making money.  I don’t set deadlines for myself or spend hours researching a post because it may make me rich.  I write – this blog, scripts, short stories, perhaps even that “great woman’s novel” – because of that damned curiosity and how good it feels when she’s sated.

So, on my Julia Milestone, I may start to embrace the fact that writing, in its many forms, is my “calling”… my raison d’être.  And, once again, Julia has proven herself a dependable source of inspiration when I need her.

Luckily, a writer may need to know about Ancient Egypt and classical painting and tarot reading and Old Hollywood and the perfect French pastry crust.  So, I suppose, it’s been time well spent gathering the proper ingredients. Now, all I have to do is write my own recipes.

Cheers to the Late Bloomers.

Happy Birthday to me.

For further reading/viewing:

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto Edited by Joan Reardon

Julie & Julia Directed by Nora Ephron

The French Chef Starring Julia Child, streaming on Amazon Prime via PBS

Julia A documentary by Julie Cohen and Betsy West