Before Julia & Julia

was Julia Childs’ sweet memoir ‘My Life in France‘.  The book focuses predominantly on her time beginning in France where she and her husband relocated for his work with the American Embassy.  There is some reference to her upper-middle class upbringing and how she and Paul met, but mostly she writes about her discovery of food and building a life together.  What surprised me was that this was the tenderness with which she writes about her marriage.  These were two people who appreciated and cared deeply for one another, and in his love she flourished.  Their mutual interests became her passion, and he seemed to delight in her fearlessness; starting a new career in mid-life, going to a traditional French cooking school.  If you think the French aren’t scary, go work in a French kitchen.

Her description of her own marriage gives an intimate window into how sweet and satisfying it was, and how two smart people used their intellects and generosity to expand their worlds.  I was moved by it.  Finding love later in life, taking chances, delving into new worlds and finding improbable success are universally appealing themes, which I am sure is why this book was a hit.  She is also surprisingly candid about the last years of Paul’s life.  Their age difference caught up with them towards the end.  Unable to continue to care for him she ends up placing him in a nursing home where he declines further and further into dementia.  I thought about how difficult that must have been for her, to have such an important connection in her life cut in this way.  To have a spouse who is alive but no longer able to participate in the marriage.  And yet, she kept on with her work, cooking, collaborating.

What the book doesn’t expressly say but exemplifies is that food is more than the sum of its parts.  I love food because of the relationships it creates, the ritual of preparation, discovery, the connection to land, and of course the pleasure of eating.  Obviously Julia and Paul figured this out too.