“Julie and Julia” was on TV tonight and I watched it. Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and Amy Adams plays a fan who works her way through Julia’s French cooking opus and writes a blog about her journey.

This is a true story with, I guess, some liberties taken as is usually the case. The young fan obsesses over her self-appointed task, nearly drives her husband away, finally shapes up and is then pursued by the media because of her successful blog and the unusual nature of her effort. She then learns that Julia Child, then 90, is not thrilled with her, doesn’t want to meet her or know anything more about her, and least that she has successfully completed all 574 recipes in her magnum opus in one year.

The movie alternates between Julie’s story, the young would-be writer/cook's effort in 2002, and Julia’s own story of being in Paris in the late 40s with her U.S. Information services husband and attending the famous Cordon Bleu school where she learned how to cook. Her subsequent book on teaching American cooks the art of French cooking was ground-breaking. Julie and Julia, in their different eras, are both charming, ebullient, full of enthusiasm and determined to pursue their passion.

I can only think that at 90, Julia, who had lost her husband 10 years before (according to the blurb at the end of the movie) had morphed into a woman who didn’t want to let go and was, in some way, angry at the world as personified by this seeming upstart, “Who are you to think you can be me when I am still me and want to be young again.”

I understand this feeling and have run into it when I have met people I’ve admired who feel angry that they are no longer young and even someone who admires them doesn’t ease the pain. "You have no right to be starting out all full of life and hope when I am on my way out." Anyway, that’s how I interpreted Julia’s refusal to acknowledge Julie, who had adored her and despite this rejection, forgave her.

I hope I am never so mean spirited, although who knows what loneliness and loss, and perhaps also an aging brain, can do to one's personality and sense of self.

xx, Teal