Buen Camino, Wendy

Chance meetings and long walks

‘Blooming is hard and the most important thing is – to bloom’ Yevgeny Zamyatin

From A Story about the most important thing

The wistful list

Photo Anet Ahern

I don’t have a bucket list. I have a wistful list. It is full of things that I wish I had done. Some of them I will never be able to do now but I think of them without regret, sorting through them like one declutters. I discard, rediscover and store them as I go along. Many I can still do and hope to.

I stepped down from an almost four-decade long corporate career three weeks ago, my occasional career breaks (ahem…burnout episodes) only serving as bridges to the next, more responsible, more stressful position. It was an exciting and rewarding career with huge sacrifice. I cannot recall a holiday that was not interrupted by the crises that should really have been labeled business-as-usual due to the regularity of their occurrences, or the scheduled daily check-ins to ensure that the holiday’s end was not followed by an overwhelming backlog.

I am often asked what I am going to do. It is not always easy to articulate the impact of a lifetime of living in the bipolar corporate world of information chunking and micro-detail, with very little in between, possibly an experience due to the positions I held. I want to explore the in-between now, flexing a part of my brain that is quite unfit. If I had to describe a kitchen, in corporate speak it would either be a one-slide PowerPoint with five bullets listing the main characteristics, or a full inventory, categorised and analysable, including every forgotten baby spoon. Those processes served me well, but now I want to describe what the kitchen smells like and what happened to the person who ate from the little baby spoon forgotten in the back of the drawer. And this is proving to be difficult.

The Kitkat habit

Photo Anet Ahern

Re-watching favourite movies is an unashamed habit, like choosing a KitKat for the millionth time when there are many other chocolates to try. I am totally at peace with my inability to keep up with the never-ending stream of content coming my way. Watching Shawshank Redemption for probably the 20^th time last weekend, I smiled again at Red’s comment that Brooks could not make it outside, as he had been institutionalized by his long stay in prison. I never viewed work like that (not often, anyway), but one can feel lost when your calendar is no longer dotted with “really important things” for months ahead.

I am artfully dodging the deadline of my writing course by writing this, telling myself this is the scales before playing the piece. I was recently advised to slow down and take the reader into the writing. I was bullet-pointing my way through each scene, and one critic said: ‘Why would the reader be invested at all?’.

My response to improving my writing, other than writing more, was to read books in print. I am an avid audiobook fan, often unable to read a book without falling asleep for years, and sometimes unable to fall asleep without listening to one. Audiobooks became my boundary between work and home. I preferred going into the office for this very reason - a boundary. But reading a book held in your hands is so different and I look forward to doing much more of this. So, I ended up in Spain with a South African novel on my table.

Cake for breakfast

Photo Anet Ahern

Living the ultimate cliché, I booked a Camino immediately after downscaling. One of my wistful list items is to be as fit and healthy as I can be without being a total pain. There can be few better ways than walking the Spanish countryside with no cutoff time after having cake for breakfast, stopping for coffee as often as you want.

Stopping in Olveiroa, a woman traveling alone asked to join our table. I remember her from breakfast at the previous town where the hotel manager told me in broken English that there were two routes people took from there. While I was not opposed to a bit of meandering, I did not feel like getting lost after walking 55km over the previous two days. I asked if she spoke English and she said she was American. I thought it was an odd answer, but I got what I needed out of the conversation in the end and picked a route.

Hours later, she joins our table en route to the next town and introduces herself as Wendy (first names only on Camino, it seems). We sit next to a rowdy Irish family who missed a few spots when applying sunblock, sporting random painful red stripes on their necks and feet.

Old ladies wearing lilac

Photo Anet Ahern

Wendy is a petrochemical engineer with an MBA (‘in the end it is all about finances isn’t’ it’ she said) who retired a few years ago. She serves on the power board of the island she lives on, in Canada. She is 66 years old with long, curly grey hair tied back in a loose ponytail, strands lifting in the breeze. She has been walking for four weeks.

She carried all her luggage herself on this walk, but today she carries a small shopping bag, sending her backpack on to the next town, giving her back a break. She wears a lilac quick-dry T-shirt with a slightly darker lilac bodywarmer. She looks like an ordinary older woman. For 99% of the population, she would have little appeal as a prospect for conversation.

She started a six-week long trip in Porto with an old school friend, met up with some more friends in Europe, before her a walk in Spain. A friend was supposed to join her on the Camino but cancelled. She fantasizes that her husband may appear at some point on her trip, but he is very busy, serving on many boards, and it is not really his thing. She says this without any resentment or self-pity, which makes me like her.

On our table are two books, ready for an afternoon read. The one is Sleeper, by Mike Nicol, and the other The Last Hunt by Deon Meyer. I mention that I love reading books that take place in towns I know. We talk about John D. MacDonald as one of the authors who apparently inspired Deon Meyer, and then her story unfolds.

She belongs to a book club, one her mother belonged to for 35 years. The other members are between 84 and 94 years old. The 94-year-old is a good driver, much better than the other ones, according to Wendy. Instinctively, I am glad I do not live on that island, despite having honed my skills for dealing with the Cape Town taxis.

Her mother, who has since passed away, lived on a different island to her and her husband, and during Covid Wendy left her job to look after her mother as she was getting very frail. Another job post Covid, and Wendy has now retired from full-time work. She and her husband continue to live on her mother’s island.

During Covid Wendy helped her mother to attend the book club via Zoom. After her mother died, the group (now down to 9 from the optimal number of 12 for monthly hosting, as two more members died) offered Wendy a position in the club. This was a big deal, as they had not had new members for many years and the bar was high. The first club meet was a memorial service for her mother, she tells with a smile.

A brief entanglement

Photo Anet Ahern

The inevitable sharing of most amazing recent reads follows. I share my ongoing love for Gatward and JD Kirk, and also tell her about the beautiful stage adaptation of the book The Life and Times of Michael K. She recognizes J. M Coetzee’s name, having read one of his books. She puts it on her list.

She shares a few books with me. The first is The Rose Code, which she claims to be captivating. A group of women, selected by (among other things) their ability to do crosswords, was given a brief reprieve from the limited, mundane options available to women, all due to a war. Another one is Entangled Life, which is about the world of fungi, lichen, molds and yeasts – not something the algorithm or my own searches would easily find.

I am immediately transported back to breathing in the forest smells and the earth on a recent forest experience with Karin Schimke, Evelyn John and Hillary Harker. I note that one down too.

A short exchange, a brief entanglement of our lives and she picks up her tote bag and starts walking again. Appearances can be deceiving.