Bija Gutoff
Julie had this remarkable effect on me, to make me care more (about what I was working on) and care less (about what other people thought). I felt both more focused and more free after being with her.
Julie made up her own damn rules. Who doesn’t let their two-year old play with matches? That video made me choke. So Julie. There’s more than one way to be a mother and a grandmother. I want to be that goofy, irreverent, unforgettable wise woman. Have you ever seen any memorial mention candy and party favors as often as hers? Most of us are carrying around locked closets of unexpressed love. The locks? Our fear. Don’t wait.
Julie was a player. But she wasn’t the kind of player I grew up with. Those hustlers extracted something from you – contacts, gossip, the inside scoop – by manipulation or sly force, and then traded it for their own benefit, leaving you feeling used. Julie wasn’t like that. She had some of the affect – the snarky wit of a sassy East Coast woman. The brass to challenge any tycoon in an Hermes tie. But Julie applied her people skills like a maestro with a magic wand. She would ask the thing no one else asked, listen, say the thing no one else said, listen, and move her cause – whether it was you, your kid, other people’s kids, your career, other people’s careers, your art, the arts, the city – forward.
What floored me about Julie from the time we met – when our kids went to middle school together – was how she had all that toughness and so much sweet warmth. She was a tiger with a whipped-cream heart. She created intimacy in a few words. She mocked the douchebags who’d hurt you, and eased your hurt, and seemed so free.
You wanted Julie on your side. I heard her trash people she disdained, with precise cuts just where their ego and incompetence showed through – she had no patience for those in power who abused it, or those with rank they didn’t earn, or those who flaunted what they had earned.
When Julie told me that something I’d written made her cry, it meant more than most critiques. Because I didn’t want to just be a good writer. I wanted to make felt connections. “I expected to cry,” she said to me in one email. “I didn’t expect to have as many tears as I did. You gave me the perfect card. And your thoughtfulness always just slays me.” In the next she said, “I Loved talking to you dear one and I read your card to me again yesterday. it is so Bija.” A month later, “I just read the card again for the third time. It will be with me always. Thank you dear Bija.”
Who makes a point of remembering a single gesture three times, then taking the time to tell the giver how it made them feel? Julie Mancini did. Thank you, Julie. I’m lighting matches for you.