It started, as most of my questionable decisions do, with Carmen saying something like, “It’ll be good for you.”
She meant the olive harvest. Her uncle Paco needed an extra pair of hands. I needed, apparently, to “feel the land.” She said that too. With this sweeping gesture across the valley like she was some sort of Andalusian Julie Andrews. All I saw was a lot of trees, a lot of ladders, and a deeply suspicious donkey.
And still, I said yes.
You ever tried beating an olive tree?
Not metaphorically. Not with poetry in your soul or a sense of purpose in your chest. I mean literally. With a stick.
Because that’s what harvesting olives involves. No gentle plucking. No wicker baskets and slow-motion smiles like in the adverts. You hit the branches. Hard. With long bendy poles that seem designed specifically to whip back and slap you in the face.
They laid out massive green nets under the trees. Carmen’s tío Paco handed me what looked like a fibreglass lance and said one word:
“Dale.”
I thought it meant “go for it.” So I did. I poked the branch. Gently. Like I was testing the temperature of bathwater.
He burst out laughing. Actually leaned forward, hands on his knees, and wheezed. Then showed me how it’s done. Full gladiator mode. Smacking the branches like they’d owed him money since 1974. Olives rained down like hailstones.
I tried again. Swung too hard. Hit myself in the shin. Carmen said nothing but smiled that kind of smile that says, “I will remember this and bring it up at a socially inconvenient moment.”
The donkey, by the way, is called Román.
He’s got cataracts and a vendetta. Keeps looking at me like I stole his job. I didn’t. I don’t want it. I’m not even sure what it is. He stands there tethered to a wheelbarrow that no one uses, farting occasionally and glaring. I tried to feed him an olive out of guilt. He bit me. Well, tried. Got the glove. Still felt personal.
The day got longer and my spine shorter.
After four hours, I’d sweated through every layer including my supposed dignity. My hands looked like they’d been in a fight with a cheese grater. I discovered muscles in my lower back that hadn’t activated since 2004. Paco gave me a sandwich with some kind of sausage I didn’t recognize and a flask of thick red wine that tasted like courage and regret.
Then he patted my shoulder, not unkindly, and said, “No es tu vocación.”
Which—Carmen later translated—meant something like, “This is not your calling.”
No kidding, Paco.
But then something strange happened.
When we loaded the crates into the back of the pickup, and I’d stopped breathing like a Victorian chimney sweep, Paco handed me a small bottle. “Primera prensa,” he said. First press. The oil from last year.
I took it home. That night, Carmen fried eggs in it. Simple. Ridiculous. Delicious. She tore a hunk of bread, dipped it in the golden green slick, handed it to me like a communion wafer.
“You survived,” she said.
“I did,” I said. “Barely.”
And she leaned against me, smelling of woodsmoke and rosemary, and said, “Paco likes you now.”
“Because I failed?”
“No. Because you showed up.”