How One Mentor Sparked My Greatest Adventure and My Memoir

Have you ever reunited with a long-lost mentor? A teacher or another person who influenced your life in ways you never imagined?

That’s what a charismatic Moroccan-French-Israeli woman did for me when I was just sixteen.

But it wasn’t until writing my first memoir, Newcomers in an Ancient Land, that I realized just how much she’d influenced my youthful decision to spend a gap year in Israel right after high school.

Not to mention moving to France the following year, a decision that would extend that gap year into a decade of language learning and self-discovery. That odyssey animates Labyrinth of the Heart, my next memoir-in-progress.

First Meeting: the Indomitable Esther

Her name was Esther – pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.

When we first met in the early 1960’s, she was the young mother of a toddler and I was her babysitter. Picture two young women so physically different it was almost comical.

Crossing her threshold, I entered a living room of colorful wall hangings accented by glowing copper. A savory aroma wafted from the kitchen.

Me: short legs, freckled face, curly red hair. Esther: long angular limbs, olive complexion, dark flowing hair.

But we’d soon discover deeper things in common. Both of us had traveled at an early age – Esther had emigrated from Morocco, to Israel (via France), then to the US while I’d arrived in the US from my birthplace in London, then crisscrossed until my family settled in California.

Both of us were of Jewish background, though in very different ways. But most poignantly, we both shared an adventurous spirit that longed to escape the beautiful but isolated northern California coast whose fog-shrouded redwoods we were too depressed to appreciate.

That yearning became our mutual bond. Like a student in awe of a revered teacher, I absorbed every word of Esther’s stories of the sunny Mediterranean and French cuisine.

Years later, the memory of the regal woman who opened the door to my future remained vivid:

She wore a caftan of diagonal red-and-black stripes that set off her olive skin and angular frame… Gold hoops glowed in her long dark hair, and a warm smile softened her beaky nose.

Crossing her threshold, I entered a living room of colorful wall hangings accented by glowing copper. A savory aroma wafted from the kitchen.

Esther poured two gold-rimmed glasses of fresh mint tea and set them on a low brass tray. Although I loved my mother’s milky English tea, the mint was heavenly. Over the steaming tea, she began her story…

Esther’s Story

After growing up in Marrakesh, Esther had immigrated to Israel by way of France when she was just fifteen, almost my own age.

After her compulsory army service she’d married an American professor who’d landed a job at Humboldt State University, where my dad also taught. She’d found me through the faculty babysitting network.

Besides French, she spoke English, Hebrew and Arabic! I too loved languages, cooking, and adventure. I was also curious to explore my Jewish roots and explore a world as wide as Esther’s.

Esther Plants the Seeds of Adventure

The seeds she planted fell in the fertile soil of my adolescent idealism and soon germinated… One especially gloomy day, Esther mentioned a work/study program called an ulpan where students could learn Hebrew while volunteering on a collective farm called a kibbutz. The ulpan offered a solution to my wanderlust that was both ideal and practical. I decided then and there to find my way to Israel as soon as I finished high school.

This is how mentors inspire writers. Not always through craft advice or editorial feedback. Sometimes through a life so fully lived that it ignites something in us we didn’t know was there.

How Mentors Inspire Writers: Finding a Long-Lost Mentor

Writing Newcomers brought Esther’s energy and passion back to life. It also sparked an intense desire to reconnect with her. Over the long arc of time, we’d lost touch but luckily the Internet made my search fairly easy. Watching a YouTube video from the 1990’s, I knew the vivacious pastry chef teaching none other than Julia Child to make croissants could only be Esther!

First Reunion

Daring to send my contact information along with an advance copy of Newcomers in an Ancient Land to an address I hoped was hers, I waited anxiously for a reply. But then a month went by. Still no response. Fortunately, my search hadn’t revealed an obituary, but realizing she must now be in her eighties, I wondered if her health had declined?

But just when I’d given up hope, my phone buzzed. Elated, I called back.

“Alo?” purred a throaty voice.

“Esther!” I babbled into the phone, “c’est moi – Paula – the one who sent you the book.”

“Oh, I loved it!” she gushed. But after a few minutes of polite conversation she graciously confessed, “forgive me, but I can’t place you.”

Imagine my dismay! In my wildest dreams, I’d failed to imagine this scenario. Like a dusty footnote, had I been erased from her memory, along with those depressing years she’d wanted only to forget?

But Esther was unfazed. “You must come and visit me!” she insisted, offering her familiar hospitality. And so, in the spring of 2021, over fifty years after our first meeting, I knocked on the door of her condo on the 21st floor of a high rise in downtown Philadelphia. Graying but sharp as ever, she welcomed me in with a traditional kiss on both cheeks!

Second Reunion

Fast forward to June, 2026. Once again, we embrace French style – two aging women with long eventful lives largely behind us. I now have a fuller sense of Esther’s story over the blank canvas between our original meeting and these two reunions.

Along with her fame as a pastry chef, Esther was the first female (and Jewish) chef for an exclusive men’s club in Philadelphia. And a few years ago, she was also a finalist on The Moth Radio Hour.

For a comprehensive bio and to hear Esther’s own story, listen to A Girl from Marrakech at The Moth: https://themoth.org/storytellers/esther-mcmanus

Past and Present Collide

Yet Esther knows almost nothing about me beyond my memoir. This distinctly asymmetrical relationship leaves me feeling a bit like her teenage babysitter again! As we chat, my youthful infatuation evaporates somewhat along with the smoke from her Marlboro – a habit that makes her more human.

With past and present colliding like tectonic plates, I’m coming to realize that whether Esther remembers me or not isn’t really the point. Her gifts of PASSION, INSPIRATION and COURAGE transcend our personal memories, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

I used to joke that I should live an adventurous life so I’d have something to write about when I got old. Well, that time has come! Newcomers in an Ancient Land is already out. Stay tuned for the sequel as I journey to France in Labyrinth of the Heart, on the path set by Esther the Indomitable so long ago!

This is how mentors inspire writers: one spark, one story, one life fully lived, and the writer who was paying attention.

This article originally appeared on ProlificWriters.life.