Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.
Does it have to be a man? Many women have impacted my life in a positive fashion. My Welsh grandmother taught me how to cook. She would stand me on a small stool placed beside the stove and I would watch as she explained what she was doing and why she was doing it. She allowed me to stir the various mixtures, to help beat the eggs, and when she baked, she always gave me a small piece of cake mix or dough so that I could create something for myself and bake it in the oven with the all the other things. It is hard to beat that type of impact. The small stone she threw still sends ripples through my kitchen and that of my daughter and granddaughter.
When I think of kitchens, I think of the many, many kitchens that I visited when living in France, Spain, and Oaxaca, Mexico. In each of them I picked up so many hints and ideas. In Santander, how to make a tortilla espanola / Spanish omelet. Every evening, my first landlady would leave, on the kitchen counter, one egg, one potato, and one onion. That was my supper – but I had to make it myself. I have made Spanish omelets for 60 years now. Some are simple, others combine different ingredients. All come from the kitchens I have visited in Spain.
In France, I learned the Parisian way to scramble eggs. Again, my landlady taught me how to scramble them her way, the only correct way. My scrambled eggs, learned as I was perfecting my knowledge of French language and culture, are still the talk of the table, when I serve them. Oaxaca was a total revelation, as I have said on many occasions, as was Oaxacan cooking. The first thing I learned – how to prepare quesadillas. Alas, there are no offerings of flor de calabaza with wish to garner them, not here in Canada, not that I have seen, anyway. Next came pico de gallo, that inimitable blend of cilantro, onion, jalapeno, tomato, lime, and salt. All of these recipes came, verbally, and practically, from the wonderful women who have enriched my world, as did the bacon and eggs, on a tortilla, with salsa mexicana, and the eggs scrambled in orange juice. And we won’t talk about the chapulines, grass-hoppers fried in garlic, nor the avocado with tuna delicacies.
Of course there have been men as well. Mon, the friend who spent twenty-three years in a Franco jail as a political prisoner, and survived. He built his own boat, powered by an old engine from a bakery that he adapted, and together we fished the Bay of Santander, every Sunday, for three consecutive summers. He taught me the secrets of the bay, where the fish were, where they hid, how they moved with the tides. He would encourage me to jump over the side, in deep water that lifted me up with the surge of the Biscay, under my armpits, and wouldn’t let me back on board until I could name every part of the bote. I became a very quick learner, especially as he was eating the omelet and drinking the wine as I was speaking. It was another incredible enrichment.
Juanra, from Avila, was another such teacher. He would take me on his Sunday excursions to buy the week’s wine for his hostal-restaurante, and together we would visit La Seca, and other local wine-growing regions. I remember the day he and the lady who owned the vineyard we were visiting baptized me. We stood, thirty five feet underground, beside a wooden barrel, one of twelve in that cellar, that contained 5,000 litres of white wine. Juanra climbed a six foot ladder, and stood beside a tiny feather that acted as a plug to keep air out of the barrel. The lady, who performed the role of high priest, gave me a glass, showed me where to hold it, beneath the spigot, so that the wine would fill it and I could taste and test it. She turned the tap on – but no wine came out – then she held my hand ‘to keep it and the glass steady’. “Ahora / Now!” she gave the command. Juanra withdrew the feather, the wine flowed, and the lady jiggled my arm and soaked me from wrist to elbow, shrieking with a high-pitched laughter that blended with Juanra’s bass guffaw. “Ya te hemos bautizado,” they cried in unison. “Now we have baptized you.” And there I stood, a child of the vineyard and an adopted son of the land.
Just one? Only one? How could you be so cruel? I remember with great fondness one of my rugby coaches. Many of the people who surrounded him thought he was a clown, and told me so behind his back. But he had a certain something – and I wasn’t sure what it was. One day, at a national coaching conference, he took me on one side. “You already know everything that people here can teach you. But, somewhere, there is one piece of gold. You may find it here, or there, or in the bar. But that one piece of gold is what you will take home with you.”
When I coached the provincial junior team, one summer, I invited that coach to visit and to help me coach. We walked onto the field together. “Leave this to me,” he said. I asked him what I could do to help and he said – “Nothing. Just sit in my back pocket. See what I see. keep quiet. Ask questions later.” He started with a warm up game of rugby, which he refereed. “Whenever I blow the whistle three times – like this peep! – peep! – peep! – I want you to stop wherever you are. Don’t move until I tell you to.”
Then followed the most wonderful master coaching session I have ever witnessed. A ruck – peep! – peep! – peep! – – “Who was first to arrive?” No answer. he pointed. “You were. What did you do? Why did you do it?” This went on and on – scrums, lineouts, kick-offs, penalties, 25 yard drop outs – we weren’t metric yet. “Peep! – peep! – peep! – What did you do? Why did you do it? What else could you have done? Why didn’t you do that?”
They had called him a clown, the ones with the papers, and the coaching certificates, and the education, behind his back, and to them he was clown. But to me, he was a master coach. He taught me how to look, to listen, to see, to ask questions, and never to judge anyone until I had walked in a person’s shoes, or sat in their back pocket, not just for a mile, but for a whole wonderful weekend. He had a wonderful sense of humor and the clown left everyone laughing. Clown? He might have been the Prince of Clowns, but I have never forgotten what he taught me, nor how he taught it.
