What I Learned From My Idols

As a youngster and as a teenager, all my idols were from writers, characters and personalities on TV shows, or students from my father’s drawing and painting classes.

I remember reading, Charlotte Brontë and Louisa May, Alcott and thinking their characters had such admirable, inner strength and fortitude. In third grade, I read Black Beauty and fell in love with the wildness of the landscape and the inner strength of the main characters. A series of books called The Great Brain in which a very young boy, outsmarts adults, and solves all kinds of conundrums, inspired me to speak up when I saw or understood something that the adults around me weren’t able to see.

From the time I was in first grade I remember racing up the driveway afterschool in order not to miss the opening minutes of The French Chef. I was enraptured by Julia Child and the techniques she taught. I loved her humour and her precise way of speaking. The lilt in her voice reminded me of the Katherine Hepburn films which played weekly on Afternoon Movie. Both Hepburn and Child showed me there was a world where people made things happen, wielding language as action and did so in rapid, witty repartee. I idolised both these women and took up cooking by the time I was 7, making omelettes, pancakes and cakes as well as trying my hand at soups and dishes for dinners. My first real cooking venture was Coq au vin, served with sautéed green beans dressed with an almandine vinaigrette and a mixed side salad when I was 12.

I loved Hepburn for the way her characters stood up for what they believed in. They made things happen and it was only later, reading about her while I was in High School that I learned her characters were similar to her real life.

What I see as I write this is that most of the people or characters I idolised, were strong, articulate people who took action. Sometimes they were women, like Child and Hepburn, or animals, like Black Beauty or the creatures in the C.S.Lewis and Tolkien series.

In High School I spent time sitting in the most remote room of the old library; an attic that had been turned into a cosy reading room. There I read my way through books by ballerinas who were never expected to become professionals and inspired by their determination to follow their heart even when others around them said it couldn’t be done. It was in that same aerie where I read the entirety of Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette. I loved the precision with which Post presented guidelines for life. Thoughtfulness for others, politeness and a regard for clarity were embedded in her guidelines for living.

Growing up with my father’s art students always milling around, and often being included in their conversations, I was never talked down to. It was the mid to late 60’s and university students were involved in art, politics and a cultural revolution that included treating even children like me, as thoughtful and intellectually capable individuals. There were often students coming for dinner and staying to talk far into the night. In the morning they’d be cooking us breakfast, playing music and diving back into conversations about art-making and the place of artists in the world. They came from all over the globe and so imbued me with a desire to travel and a taste for exploration of their cultures which to me clearly had often superior food, music, art and architecture to what I saw in the USA. This was underscored when we moved to Rome, Italy when I was 9 years-old. The world blossomed for me then and I drank in all I could from Italian culture.

When I reflect on what I learned from all these people, real or imagined, I notice that they all seemed to me to be actively creating their lives. They saw what they wanted and found ways to make it happen, despite adversity and nay-sayers. They were polite, thoughtful and still moved forward on their dreams. They didn’t need to make others feel small, in fact, in most cases they tried to bring others along or help others grow as they moved towards the life they wanted to live. They weren’t stabbing people in the back or being mean in order to feel bigger- this was an enormous difference to the kids in my elementary school classes, or teachers and deans at my high school who felt they needed to belittle or undermine someone, in order to feel important or powerful.

I’ve never understood why people feel they need to make someone else smaller. Why not see that when we support each other and help each other grow our own specific abilities, then we all win, we all benefit and the world becomes a better, more interesting and more humane place for us all. My idols taught me this and I still believe it’s true, even though these days I often lose my belief in it being possible.

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