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• The Slice Newsletter

TRAVELING WITH CHILD

By Seth Maislin, PI managing partner

My first ASI conference was 1997 in Winston-Salem, where Julia Child was the keynote speaker. (I would join the national board one year later, in 1998.) On Sunday morning after the conference, several attendees traveled together to the airport to fly to Atlanta, where we would catch our connecting flights. Like Mrs. Child herself, I was headed to Boston’s Logan Airport, and so was given the chivalrous duty of accompanying her safely to our gate. It was not yet 8 a.m. as she and I rode together on the back of a shuttle car through several terminals. I remember well the feeling that I was recipient of all those double-takes from other passengers as they realized who was passing them. Of course, even when sitting Mrs. Child was at least a foot taller than I.

We checked in at the gate, got our boarding passes, and found ourselves with nearly two hours to kill before boarding. Acknowledging the time of day we walked side-by-side to an airport cafeteria, where we ordered a breakfast spooned out of metal trays and sat facing each other in a plastic booth. Here, too, my memories are vivid: trying to keep the membranous syrup on my Styrofoam plate from commingling with my pebble-like powdered eggs, waiting patiently as strangers sang praises and held out ticket envelopes for an autograph.

We spoke about neither food nor indexing. Instead, she spoke of her late husband and her time in the War, about love and relationships, about finding one’s path in life by accident and then enjoying the journey. If this sounds profound, I apologize. I did not watch cooking shows and barely cooked myself; I was in serious love with my then-girlfriend and couldn’t keep it to myself; and frankly, we had nothing at all in common. She was literally three times my age. When the small talk dries up, what else do two completely different people speak about for hours on end?

We boarded the plane and shook a hearty goodbye in First Class as I made my way to Coach. Five minutes later, a flight attendant found me by my physical description. “Ms. Child requests your presence in first class,” she said, and by accepting her offer we spoke further for at least two hours more. Apparently she had enjoyed our conversation, too. She died in 2004, seven years later.

There’s irony here. Had I not been indifferent to the encounter when it happened, it would never have happened. Luckily, I was who I was, and we spoke deeply about life for several hours. Indeed, we do find our paths by accident, and then enjoy the journey.