"Be ready when the luck happens"
Friends, I just finished reading Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, and there are just so many good take-aways from it. I’m currently planning an Ina Garten-based event to share with you all in January, just because the book is so stinking good.
The brief synopsis, which is mostly spoiler-free if you know anything about Ina’s life:
Ina was a product of the 1950s. She was born in mid-forties, and raised in a traditional home with traditional gender roles. One of the things that is news-worthy from the book is her description of her childhood, which looked exactly like one expected from the outside, but was not pleasant behind closed doors. She mostly skims over details, but her father was volatile and her mother quite cold, and both of them piled negative judgment on Ina.
Let’s just say that though the issues in my own home were a bit different from hers (mine included an extremely volatile mother), a lot of what she said resonated. Including her descriptions of how she chafed at traditional gender roles and expectations from the time she was quite young
Ina married Jeffery when she was just 20, and she credits him with “parenting” her to help her find her way in the world once she was free of her parents’ house. That dynamic, combined with the traditional gender roles (woman keeps house, man pays bills), also caused some issues in their marriage.
While I have always considered Ina and Jeffery to be “relationship goals” based on how cute they are together, how they interact, and how they seem so very supportive of one another’s professional lives and hobbies, I appreciate Ina sharing what went on in their early days together, and how things could have ended up much differently. She is unflinching in looking at her own issues, as well as the way things in her marriage were a bit difficult.
I am sure there are some things that she has glossed over (disputes with other businesses, for instance), but overall it not only tracks with what you already know if you have read her cookbooks and watched her shows, but adds so much more.
And of course it “sounds” just like Ina as you read—I read the hardcover; if you prefer audiobooks, Ina herself will read it to you.
Just look at all those tabs!
So many great points and takeaways. You should probably read this book, is what I’m saying.
Here are some things that I’m taking away from the book as life coaching:
“Life lesson—some things you think are important turn out to be not worth worrying about.” p. 50
Jeffrey told Ina early in their marriage, “You need to figure out what to do with your life or you won’t be happy.” p. 61. Get you a man who wants you to have your own dreams.
“Yes, we had new opportunities in the 1970s, but it began to dawn on us that we were expected to add them to whatever we did in our traditional roles. It wasn’t having it all, it was doing it all.” p. 104 Seems some things haven’t changed all that much in the past 50 years . . .
“[F]lexibility is really important in business.” p. 120
“One thing I learned, and continue to learn every day, is that the food we enjoy most connects to our deepest memories of when we felt happy, comfortable, and nurtured.” p. 148 I keep thinking about this, and about how it must be true because otherwise there’s no way to explain my fondness for scrapple.
Repeated several times throughout the book like a refrain is something that Jeffrey once said to Ina: “You never know your good breaks from your bad ones.” p. 158 and elsewhere (He’s not saying she’s inattentive, just that sometimes when something happens that seems bad, it turns out be be good, and vice versa.) It reminds me of the ancient parable from China about a man whose son fell over a cliff and broke his arm (or leg?). The neighbor said “oh, that’s bad”, but the man replied, “maybe, maybe not.” A bit later the military came through to enlist able-bodied men, and the son wasn’t able to go. The neighbor said, “oh, that’s good”, and the man replied “maybe, maybe not.” It goes on through a whole bunch of other ups and downs, and the point is that things that seem bad at first can turn out to be good, and vice versa.
I could go on with quote after quote, but there are just so many, and so much wisdom in the book. And despite what I’ve shared so far, I can honestly say that some of the stuff that was the deepest fodder for thought (and discussion) is about her realizations about her parents, about traditional gender roles, and about her own ability to change things for herself.
If you are interested in joining me to chat about this book, I invite you to (a) read or listen to it first and (b) come to my first-ever salon on Wednesday, January 8th at 1 pm EST, via Zoom. Here is the link to register for the salon.
What is a salon? Simply put, it’s a gathering held by a host, usually with a particular topic or performance at the center of it. So it could be a musician or poet sharing their work, an artist giving a demonstration or a talk, or a discussion of a particular topic. Here’s the Wikipedia link if you are into reading about the history of salons.
