To make matters worse, the culture of the kitchen in a busy restaurant can be a bit rough-and-tumble. At its worse, the vocabulary and style of communication falls somewhere between longshoreman and carney. To complicate matters even more, this colorful exchange is in two languages. The hispanics speak Spanish with one another, those born in the US speak English and then there’s a sort of “restaurant Spanglish” that’s used between the two groups.

Those of us who studied Spanish in school and can understand the “textbook perfect” diction of our high school Spanish teacher don’t stand a chance. There is one word that stands out above all the rest, an all-purpose adjective that crops up in just about every sentence – “pinche” (pronounced peen-chay).

Now, depending on who you ask, this is either a harmless little filler word, or a foul curse. It seems to depend on where you are from. In many Spanish-speaking countries it means something like “insignificant”, “lousy”, “miserable” or “worthless”. It might be used in this context to emphasize the dirtiness of “los pinches platos” or the difficulty of “este pinche trabajo”.

In seems that in Mexico, however, the word has a harsher connotation. The website pinche.com (I kid you not) defines it thusly

In Mexico, “pinche!” is an all-purpose insult enhancer, which is roughly equivalent to the use of “f***ing” in English.

So, this is a long-winded explanation for the purpose of explaining to you how my son Joe became known as “Pinche Yoey”, as in “Pinche Yoey, hurry up and finish the pinche salad so we can serve this pinche food!”

Sure, the older, more experienced cooks were being a little rough on him, but it was also a sign of acceptance that they were teasing him and hanging a nickname on him.

But then I bought a new dictionary for my Spanish class and was checking to see how thorough it was – did it even contain colloquial expressions? I looked up “pinche” and there was the expected definition, “rotten”. But then, there was a second, unexpected definition – “cook’s assistant”!

This changed everything! Joe’s coworkers weren’t teasing or demeaning him – they were calling him by his rightful title! It was a sign of respect!

As it turns out, what they had been saying to him all along was, “Esteemed colleague and assistant chef Joe, please, at your convenience but with a hint of urgency, complete your salad which, next to your impressive talents might seem insignificant, but nevertheless needs to join our comparatively modest dishes.”

Who knew that the meaning of one pinche word could change an entire pinche conversation!

So I joined a women’s book group.

It was great. The women read the books. They got together monthly. They talked about feelings and had deep discussions.

There was only one problem – they didn’t always get around to actually discussing the book.

That’s when I came up with Men Who Pause.

I would prove the world wrong. Men, I knew, really did long to come together in ways that didn’t require icepacks, peace treaties, or taxidermy. They could gather, using literature to stimulate good conversation.

Each month we would choose a theme with a corresponding book and movie. We would meet and talk about ideas which the book and movie inspired. Men are good at what the child psychologists call parallel play – two little boys can’t jump in a sandbox and have a heart-to-heart, but give them a toy truck, a couple of sticks, and some dirt and they know exactly what to do.

No one knew what to expect. The first film was Grizzly Man and the book was Into the Wild. The theme amounted to: “If you make a really bad decision out in nature, you will probably have an unfortunate experience at one of two ends of the food chain.” Discussion questions were assigned. One member spoke for many, smirking as he dismissed these stories about “two idiots who had it coming.”

Each month, it got a little better – the discussions were deeper and livelier. There was only one small problem: Unlike the women, our members seldom read the book.

We tried “dumbing down” the curriculum; read one chapter, use Cliffs Notes, just read the dust jacket. Some showed up with brand new books, then offered strong opinions, quoting liberally from the first three pages. Leadership was questioned; rotating leadership was instituted. It appeared there might be torn rotator cuffs and mayhem after all.

Then came the successes. A former nonreader admitted that he had now become a book-finisher. During a Jack Kerouac discussion at a San Francisco bar, we were told by young hip women that it was cool to see old guys talking about books. A stranger at a restaurant, overhearing our discussion of The Catcher in the Rye, offered a fifteen-minute monologue about a guy he once knew named Holden.

Then last summer, we planned a campout and only three of us showed up. After dinner, we sat around the campfire and Ashwin cautiously pulled a never-before-shared manuscript from his backpack. He proceeded to read incredibly personal, painful stories that he’d written about his childhood in India. Patrick and I sat in the dark and listened in awe.

We still have a lot to learn about how to do this whole book group discussion thing. But I’m confident that pages, chapters, and someday, entire books will be read. And discussed.

In recent years, I have struggled with what answer to give when people ask me, “So, what do you do?”

A few days ago, I was describing my job duties at our restaurant to a new acquaintance, who had grown up in China. When I told her that I did a little of this and a little of that – bread baking, bookkeeping, repairs, she said, “Oh, you’re a “yee jaio tee.”

“Excuse me?”

“A jee jaio tee. That’s Mandarin for one leg kicking.”

Immediately, my mind started racing. I had only just met this woman, but was it possible that she had witnessed me trying to repair something? I would say that my abilities to repair things are just about as graceful and effective as a one-legged man trying to kick something. But no, she hadn’t said that the kicker had only one leg. What did the expression mean?

She explained that it’s a Mandarin expression for a jack-of-all-trades – someone who takes care of everything under the sun, at work or at home. If something needs to be kicked, there is one leg that does all of the kicking!

Two days later, I came upon a former employee of ours in a grocery store parking lot, attempting to change a flat tire. I tried to help him, but the two of us were unable to loosen the last lug nut (one-legged kicker kicks and misses!).

We started to chat while he waited for the AAA truck to arrive and I told him that my new duties at the restaurant included bread-baking.

Phil, a former line-cook and current legal assistant is a very cerebral guy and the only person I know who wears a tam-o-shanter. He immediately replied, “Oh, you’re a dog’s body.”

“Dog’s buddy?” I replied, hearing him incorrectly. Had he noticed the dog hairs all over my clothes? Was he making a point – my wife works like a dog and I have the role of the dog’s buddy, doing little of productive value? What did he mean by this?

“No, not a dog’s buddy,” he explained. “A dog’s body. It’s a medieval expression that means a jack-of-all trades.”

Now this is too strange to be true. What are the odds that, after years of searching for an answer to give to people about what I do, two expressions were offered to me in the space of two days, one coming from Manderin and the other from medieval English? Of course, I hadn’t been able to find an appropriate answer, I didn’t have the right dictionary!

So now, I’ve decided to use one of my own unique answers to the question and combine it with my new-found knowledge. If you meet me for the first time, the conversation might go something like this:

You: “So what do you do, Mark?”

Me: “Oh, I’m a one-leg kicking mystic.”

You: “A what??????”

Me: “It’s kind of like an existential dog’s body.”

You: “Okay?…………………………… Nice weather we’re having, huh?”

My friend explained that children are taught this lesson in school at an early age and that her grandmother, who was born in Chile, is always quick to add “accidentally” – her Bolivian parents were only visiting Chile at the time.

My friend went on to explain that she believes that the fact that Bolivia is a land-locked country has affected the personal make-up of Bolivians – they are more shy and less worldly because they don’t have that connection with the sea and the greater world beyond. Each year they celebrate a Dia Del Mar – Day of the Sea – on which they ask once again that Chile return their coast to them. I read that they even maintain a Bolivian navy, using the ships to patrol rivers and lakes, waiting, I imagine, for the day when they might have a coastline to protect.

It made me wonder about someone living in the interior mountainous Andes region of Bolivia, far from the sea. If Bolivia had a narrow corridor of land, connecting to a seaport, would this make a subconscious difference in the way this person would perceive himself and the world, just knowing that he could travel to the sea, if he wanted to?

I have always lived in California, within a few hours, at most, from the ocean. I don’t actually go the beach very often and in fact, can go for months without seeing the ocean. I find it hard, though, to envision living in a land-locked part of the country. Just feeling the breeze from the ocean, knowing that the weather patterns almost always form over the sea and then pass over my home on their way inland, seeing the fog and smelling the nautical air – all of these things give me the feeling that I have a place to visit nearby that is open, expansive, connected to the world – if I should choose to go there.

I feel the same way about living close to San Francisco – it’s not like I’m constantly venturing into the city for the opera, museums, restaurants, or a baseball game. It’s just knowing that they are there and benefiting from the cultural sea breezes that waft north to my suburban home, remind me of the possibilities.

She was sitting at a small table in the middle of the room. Since all of the tables on the perimeter near the wall outlet were taken, she had plugged in a heavy-duty black extension cord, which snaked across the room to her table where she was working on her laptop. My sister chastised me for embarrassing the woman as she walked away.

When she returned and thanked us for guarding the computer, I apologized for my wisecrack about the cord. I said that the truth is that I have my laptop with me as well and that I guess that I was feeling insecure about the fact that I only had the puny cord that was supplied when I bought the computer.

“He has cord envy,” my sister offered in the way of further explanation.

The young woman laughed and said that that’s okay. She said that she needs a long extension cord to make sure that her computer doesn’t lose a charge and that she can continue doing her homework for a long period of time. She said that she has to come to a public place like Starbucks because if she stays in her apartment, she won’t get much done.

As a fellow laptop writer and procrastinator, that caught my interest and I had to ask her what happens when she stays at home – does she get sidetracked by standing in front of the refrigerator trying to decide what to eat?

She says that she finds any and everything to do besides her assignments, including cleaning the apartment from top to bottom.

I asked her if she wasn’t distracted just as much by the noise around her at Starbucks, such as the nosy people at the table next to her?

Her answer was very interesting. She said that in fact, the opposite was true. She felt that when she did her homework at Starbucks, her fellow customers were keeping an eye on her and would notice if she were slacking off from her work. This keeps her motivated and helps her to get more done.

I felt better about being such a wise guy about the extension cord, knowing that I was part of the team in the coffee house, helping a student finish her paper on time.

“Shaving,” John offered. “I’ve heard that shaving is the ideal activity for encouraging creative bursts.”

I thought about that for a moment. While I was thinking about it, I was engaged in the repetitive activity of stroking the 3-day old stubble on my chin, thinking about the beard that I’ve worn almost constantly for the past 30 years.

“Oh, so that’s my problem,” I said.

We got a good chuckle out of that one and both agreed that showering was also a great activity for creative inspiration – and something that I have done several times in the past three decades, I might add.

Then I started to tell John about my new job – I’ve been filling in as the morning bread baker at our restaurant for the past three weeks. When I tell people about learning this new skill they often have the same reaction – they say that working with dough and baking bread must be a very zen-like activity, that getting up early and working alone with your hands, kneading the dough must be very much like a form of meditation.

My first day on the job, I was trained by Gerhard, who had owned his own bakery for years and is now semi-retired. As we were kneading the dough, he tried to explain to me how you know when it’s the right consistency.

“There’s not really an English word that describes what you’re looking for,” he said. In German, the word is fingerspitzengefuhl – literally “fingertip feel.”

I guess that what he was telling me was that my mind might not comprehend when the dough is ready, but my fingertips would let me know.

Thus started my training in this fascinating combination of analytical chemistry and gut-level intuition.

I found that you had to measure everything precisely and set the mixer to knead the dough for an exact number of minutes. But five minutes into the mixing, you had to eyeball the mixture and throw several unscientific handfuls of flour into the bowl if it didn’t look or feel right.

The same could be said for the baking time. When the timer goes off, you need to look at the loaves and see if they look right, take them out and thump them for the correct tone and sneak a peek at the bottom to find out if the crust is darkened, but not burnt. Day after day, the bread comes out slightly differently and you get to use analysis and hunch to theorize what caused the variation.

So now that I’ve progressed from a novice baker-in-training to a slightly experienced baking assistant, what do I think about the therapeutic benefits of baking bread?

I like doing the work, and I think that it’s good for body and soul. Why? I think that it’s because for me bread baking requires a perfect balance between being comfortable and confident and being pushed out of that zone. Learning something new is always a challenge, but there’s a routine, a schedule, recipes and repetition that make it do-able. And then there’s the measurable results that you can view (and eat!) Feedback is almost immediate and there are plenty of complements when you get it right. But then there’s that something that’s hard to quantify – the art, the trial and error, the intuition, the – how can I explain it?

Fingerspitzengefuhl!

It was not long after this that I discovered a book called 50 Places to Find Peace and Quiet in New York. I had always told myself that I would like to live in New York for a year, but after the “Jamba Juice incident” I decided that the only way I could manage would be if I knew some places where I could find sanctuary when things got too intense. In fact, that’s part of the appeal of the city – the frenzied pace and din that fascinates me, but only if I know when I can back off.

This summer Heidi and I visited New York for our 25th anniversary. One day we each went our own way and I took my 50 Peaceful Places book with me. The irony is that I was rushing down the street with the rest of the New Yorkers, making a brief stop at each sanctuary, clicking off a few pictures and then continuing on down the sidewalk.

A couple of days later Heidi and I were riding in a cab, stuck in traffic when I spotted a New Yorker who seemed like he had figured out a way to manage the city. He was traveling on roller blades and jaywalking, threading his way through a row of cars waiting at a red light. He was calmly chatting on his cell phone as he made his way to the sidewalk, passing our cab. He disappeared briefly into a crowd on the sidewalk and reappeared in a moment – he had put his phone away but was now eating some food he had purchased at a sidewalk stand, a Styrofoam container in one hand and a fork in the other. He peacefully continued munching and skating as he traveled down the sidewalk, ran a red light in front of our cab and disappeared up Madison Avenue.

Somehow, he had managed to immerse himself in the craziness while skating with the calm of a Buddhist monk – beautifully multi-tasking at the same time.

This summer I’ve been so busy running around that I haven’t taken time to write or to add to this blog. Somehow it doesn’t feel right to write about pausing and slowing down when you’re running around like a madman.

Maybe I can take a clue from the New York rollerblader and pause while I’m still in motion.

This weekend marks the 14th annual Italian street painting festival in my hometown of San Rafael, California and every year I ask myself this question. The tradition, imported from Italy, involves everyone from first-time amateurs to talented professional artists. For a few dollars, you and I can even purchase a square along with a box of colored chalk, and create our temporary masterpiece.

I’m always amazed at the quality of the artwork. Many of the professional artists recreate works by the masters, and to my eye, they look every bit as polished as the original. I always like to stroll down the street on Sunday night when everyone is finished, save a few artists kneeling on pieces of cardboard, covered from head to toe with smudges of chalk.

Then I return on Monday, only to find faint traces of what was there; the street-sweeping machines have already done their job in the middle of the night. I’m always left wondering why, after all of that hard work, the city couldn’t leave the impressive results for the citizens to admire for a week or two.

In his book Immortality, Milan Kundera writes about the difference between a road and a highway. A road is something on which we walk, noticing and enjoying what we pass along the way. A highway is a line connecting two points that we follow in our car in order to reach a destination or a goal. The highway is a metaphor for how we rush to complete goals without taking time to notice our surroundings.

It’s fitting that the chalk artwork is applied to the street – a street that has been closed to traffic so that we can stroll and observe, speak with the artists, and even cover ourselves and our patch of road in chalk, if we so choose.

It’s a great gift that we’ve been given – to forget about the destination, the permanent piece or art, and lose ourselves on the road for a few hours, returning home with a little chalk dust on the soles of our feet.

She’s our youngest child and since she attends a Catholic school with grades kindergarten to eight, this is, at last, the end of our days of having children in elementary school. The school community is a close-knit one with great respect for tradition and ritual, so during the last few weeks it has felt as if our family has been presented with a gold watch over and over again. There was the dinner dance for eighth graders and their parents complete with a farewell speech from the principal, and a “first dance” with fathers dancing with daughters and mothers with sons. There was the eighth grade play, with each student acting a part on the same stage where they had performed as wild animals in the first grade circus seven years ago. This was followed by the class trip, the award ceremony, the last day of wearing uniforms, finals week, and the graduation itself.

It seems like the school principal had figured out how to wring every last drop of nostalgia out the waning days of our sons’ and daughters’ childhoods.

To make it even harder to bear, my daughter is ecstatic about leaving grammar school with nary a backwards glance as she skips off towards her high school future.

But where does that leave me? As a father of the twenty-first century, I’ve been on the cutting edge of father involvement with my children. My wife and I have chosen to take a non-traditional approach to our roles as parents. When my son was born, I stayed home and served the “Mr. Mom” role while my wife worked and when my daughter arrived I worked part-time so that I could be available to help my children. My duties have included everything from diaper changer to PTA president, soccer coach to library assistant. I became used to being the only dad in a group of moms: When my son was an infant, they changed the name of our parenting group from “Mommy and Me” to “Mommy, Daddy, and Me” and years later I didn’t even bat an eye when one of my female friends said, “We moms will be attending the meeting” when she was referring to a group which included me. I even become indignant when someone condescendingly refers to “soccer moms”.

So, I guess it’s only natural that I’m going through the kind of identity crisis which in the past was something usually experienced by mothers. When you come to define yourself largely through your role as a parent, it follows that you’re going to be jolted a bit when your child doesn’t seem to be a child anymore. Sure, you know that you will still be needed, maybe more so than before – just last month I helped my daughter purchase a pair of spiky high heel shoes for her school dance – but somehow that only reminded me that she is no longer a little girl. In fact, for years I have been making a conscious effort to slowly wean myself from being involved in activities at the elementary school, knowing that this day would come.

I spoke with a father of a high school senior a few days ago who has been raising his daughter by himself for the past ten years. After graduation, she plans to attend college a hundred miles from home. He told me, with a touch of sadness in his voice, “I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to reinvent myself.”

That’s the key, I guess. We dads have been reinventing the institution of fatherhood for the past generation or two. Those of us who have chosen to be more involved in raising our children have had a front row seat at the milestones of their lives. We’ve been able to develop an easy communication honed during years of chatting with the person in the passenger seat and have been rewarded with the kind of close relationship that fathers of the past couldn’t imagine.

Still, it doesn’t make it any easier when a phase of this relationship seems to be ending. Admitting how we feel and talking about it with others is new ground for most of us as well.

Traveling into new territory is always a little uncomfortable, but I’m not the only one making the trip. I think I’ll call my friend and ask him about how he’s doing with this re-invention thing.

Lone walkers trudged in with their heads bowed, betraying the difficulties of a long day on the trail. Each person approached the desk set up in front of the hostel and presented his or her official pilgrim certificate. The host, a Spaniard in his sixties, welcomed each one in Spanish with a smile, mixed with a few words of the traveler’s own language. He asked how their Camino was going and offered words of support and humor. On the desk was a simple plate with several walnuts in their shells – the unspoken message was to help yourself, you are among friends here. He then stamped their pilgrim’s certificate to show that they had come through this town – each town had a unique stamp. At the end of the Camino several hundred miles down the road, at the cathedral of Santiago de Campostella, each pilgrim could present his credential in order to qualify for a special blessing of pilgrims.

After registering at the hostel, we left our shoes or boots on the porch. There were perhaps thirty pairs when I arrived – serious hiking books caked with mud, casual running shoes with sweaty socks stuffed inside, others with cracks and signs of wear in the leather and nylon. People went inside, following the usual evening routine: placing a backpack next to a bunk, spreading a sleeping bag on a mattress. Then they would take a shower, wash some clothes by hand, write a letter, or sit and chat.

Sitting in front of the hostel, I heard a variety of languages – Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, English. Even without distinguishing the words, I could almost tell from a distance which language was being spoken – English and German words jolted me from time-to-time as certain words were emphasized, the French were very animated, and the sounds of Spanish created a pleasant sing-song in the background.

There was a Spaniard from Cadiz, near Gibraltar. He had a gruff look with his short-cropped hair, three-day old beard and scowl. He had his shoes and socks off and was looking at the huge blisters on his heels. Actually, they were no longer blisters – the blisters had broken and he had tried to drain them and trim away the flesh so that they would heal. I had seen him working on his feet at the hostel the night before and remembered seeing him resting on the side of the trail several miles back. Now you could see that he was left with deep open sores. He had told me earlier that he had had a tough day of walking and that he was planning to return home for a week or two so that he could spend some time healing before returning to the Camino. A Brazilian man, about sixty years old was talking to him in a loud voice, almost as if he had had a glass of wine or two. He spoke Spanish slowly and loudly. He was like the comedian, the story-teller in a bar who wanted everyone to listen to what he had to say.

“They’re not so bad. I think you’ll be able to continue!”

“I don’t think so. It’s time for me to go home.”

“No. Not at all. They’ll be better in no time. You just need to rest overnight!”

“Whatever you say.”

“It’s really no problem.”

Other people nearby were grinning, amused by the false optimism of the Brazilian. Meanwhile, the man with the blisters continued to scowl.

“It’s no problem for him,” I said to the Spaniard seated next to me.

Now the Brazilian launched into another topic – extolling the virtues of some sort of liquor produced only in Brazil.

“It’s very good. Very strong. Sort of like grapa, but with a stronger finish. You must try it sometime.”

“Sounds interesting,” said the man from Cadiz, the one with the blisters.

“You know, there is something else we have in Brazil that”s better than what you will find anywhere else in the world. You know what it is?”

“Las brazilenas?” joked the Spaniard, looking up and smiling for the first time. “Brazilian women?”

The Brazilian started to explain that this wasn’t what he meant, but his speech was lost in the good-natured laughter from the rest of the group.

“Why are there so many Brazilians walking the Camino?” This from another Spaniard, one wearing a black and red nylon track suit.

“It’s because we have a writer in Brazil – Paolo Coelho – who walked the Camino and then wrote several books about it.”

“So that’s why so many of you have come?”

“Yes, but I don’t find the Camino to be the way he described it. He’s a strange writer. It’s as if he’s writing about his dreams, nothing appears the way he has described it.”

“It’s like the American writer, Hemingway,” said the man with the track suit. “He wrote about Pamplona and now all of the Americans come there.”

“I like Hemingway,” said the Brazilian in his usual straightforward way. “He’s direct and clear, easy to understand. Not like those crazy dreams of Coelho, who must have been on drugs.”

“Yes, Hemingway was just drinking all of the time,” I said.

“You’re American?” asked the man in the track suit.

“Yes, I’m from California. But I must leave now. I’m taking a bus to Logrono and then on to Madrid for my flight home. I don’t have time for any more walking.”

“Too bad. You won’t be able to walk the entire Camino.”

“Maybe like me, you’ll come back and finish some day,” said the man with the blistered feet.”

“I hope so.”

I stood up to leave, looking at the group as they looked back at me. I hesitated for a moment, not quite knowing how to put my thoughts into words. “Buen Camino,” I said, wishing them luck with their pilgrim’s journey.

“Gracias,” they answered. “Buen Viaje”. “Have a good journey home.”

I hoisted my backpack, remembering how to walk in such a way that my blisters and sore legs hurt the least, and headed toward the bus stop.