Fun Five: Julie Metz

Oct 22, 2010 by shanyn

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Fun Five Feature
Julie Metz

Author of Perfection

1. What is your favorite Crayola crayon? Perfection by Julie Metz
White. I use them as a resist when I use watercolors. I buy many boxes just for the white crayons! When I was a kid my favorite color was silver.

2. What song always makes you happy when you hear it?
“Stormy Monday”—as performed by The Allman Brothers on Live at Fillmore East.

I know, it’s a sad song about losing love, but it’s real, the melody takes me where I want to go, and I know the guitar solo by heart.

“Son of a Preacher Man” works too or anything by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

If I need to regress—“ABC” by the Jackson Five

3. What was your favorite TV show growing up?
“Get Smart.” My dad loved it too. Many lines became part of our family lingo. And yes, I can still hum the theme song.

Other highlights: “Hawaii Five-0,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and in the afternoons “Felix the Cat.” I fear I have dated myself.

4. What’s on your mousepad?
My desktop mousepad is generic—a Radio Shack design with water droplets. Boring. But these days I am mostly on my laptop, having finally gotten the hang of the track pad.

5. What is your favorite cereal?
Steel cut oatmeal, with maple syrup, almonds and raisins. In a perfect sinful universe, I add a drizzle of milk (whole) and a dollop of butter(sweet). When I was a kid I lived for Frosted Flakes (Tony the Tiger says…”They’re Great!). But this was a rare treat as my mom ran a mostly processed sugar-free home. I appreciate her choice now though I grumbled back then.

More about Perfection:
A breathtakingly honest, gloriously written memoir about the complexities of forgiveness when a young widow discovers her husband’s secret life after his death. Julie Metz seemed to have the perfect life–an adoring if demanding husband, a happy, spirited daughter, a lovely old house in an idyllic town outside New York City–when in an instant, everything changed. Her charismatic, charming husband, Henry, suffered a pulmonary embolism and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Within hours he was dead, and Julie was a widow and single mother at 44. Just like that, what seemed like a perfect life melted away. But the worst was yet to come.

Six months after his death, Julie discovered that her husband of 12 years, the man who loved her and their six-year-old daughter ebulliently and devotedly, had been unfaithful throughout their marriage, going so far as to conduct an ongoing relationship with one of Julie’s close friends. This memoir–moving, simple, filled with incandescent images–is the story of coming to terms with painful truths, of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood. Ultimately, it is a story of rebirth and happiness–if not perfection.