What do you want to be when you grow up?
As is the case for most children, when posed to me, this infamous question elicited a progression of imaginative answers. When I was about three, I wanted to be a ballerina. By the time I was six, my adoration for my best friend manifested itself in my stated desire to be a teacher (because that’s what she wanted to be). I wanted to be an art teacher, to be specific, but I think only because I I loved art and knew I wasn’t talented enough to make a living as an artist. When I was thirteen I fell in love with Chicago and decided I wanted to be a lawyer, influenced largely by the fact that I knew I needed to earn a fortune in order to live in those beautiful black, cylindrical towers bordering Lake Michigan, where I would one day live, I was certain. In high school, I decided that I wanted to be the wife of a world-famous winemaker. I envisioned myself sitting on a wide stone veranda next to a swimming pool, wearing a white, Marilyn Monroe inspired one-piece and a wide-brimmed hat of the sort worn on the French Riviera. Dream on, Elizabeth! In retrospect, I find it really frightening and embarrassing that this seemed like a valid aspiration. When I turned down a couple of full rides in order to pursue my years-old dream of drowning myself in student debt by attending a certain private university in Chicago, I started joking that my only hope was to marry well. This my way of deflecting attention from the fact that I had no career plans, and that I would probably not make any money in life unless I could find someone willing to pay me for some combination of the skills I then possessed, namely playing gin rummy, reading fashion magazines, knitting, and scrutinizing what I perceived to be my many physical shortcomings in front of a particularly unforgiving mirror.
My first “adult” (in terms of age, not maturity) career aspiration came in the form of a passion for creative writing and a hope that someone might enjoy reading the dozens of short, very unpolished vignette-style stories I loved to write. Later, when I stopped lying to myself that I didn’t mind being poor forever, my love of writing became a more practical hope of making a living as a journalist, which, along with a healthy dose of financial reality, inspired a transfer to a state university. But eventually my journalistic passion, too, fizzled out. I’ll graduate from said university in June, a French diploma in hand, and until a startling revelation a couple of months ago, I was certain to be just as directionless as ever.
One year, when I was in elementary school, I dressed up as a chef for Halloween. Papa, who worked as a chef into my early childhood, lent me his chef’s coat, his name embroidered on the lapel. In a pair of black and white pants, a floppy white hat from a restaurant supply store, and a red scarf tied around my neck, I trick-or-treated my way through the neighborhood speaking in, I must admit, a rather good French accent for a fourth grader. The lines I developed for use that night included such modest statements as, “Hah! Macaroni and cheese? My creation!” and “Peanut butter and jelly? I invented eet!” I certainly never imagined then that I would one day be surfing the websites of culinary schools across the country, or reading recipe books like they were novels, or trading my subscriptions to fashion blogs for food blogs, or spending an incredible three hours cooking a weeknight meal of braised leeks and mustard and breadcrumb-crusted chicken thighs…
But that is undeniably the case! And I feel like it’s been staring me in the face all along in the form of my father, whom I’ve always admired and whose sound advice has constituted the first phase of my culinary education. Last night we reveled in a fabulous French meal (if I do say so myself). He paired it with a bottle of Merlot and we just, well, talked about food. And it was lovely. And it made my heart swell up a little bit. Will someone really pay me one day to love food this much?
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. Isn’t that exciting? I think so, too.
