 Our guest for the next hour is Lindy Hughes, whom you can see on screen with you. Author of the 2009 novel, It Never Stays in Vegas. And last year's memoir, The Common Wife, Getting Lost, Dancing Naked, and Collecting She-Shells. The Common Wife made the nonfiction shortlist for the Whistler Independent Book Awards. It was a finalist in the inspiration category of the book Excellence Awards. And it is also a finalist in the 2020 International Book Awards. Lindy notes that a book by Pope Francis is also a finalist for this award, proof perhaps that God does have a sense of humor. In addition to her burlesque alter ego, Luna Blue, that we learned about in the book, Lindy also has a Clark Kent-like alter ego. As Lindy file, she is the editor of the West Vancouver Community Newspaper, The Beacon, and she received the 2018 West Vancouver Citizen of the Year Award from the local Chamber of Commerce. If Lindy file is Clark Kent, that must mean that Lindy Hughes is Superwoman. Our visit with Lindy today is gonna be a bit freeform. We'll start with a few questions from me. We'll talk about a writing process and her adventures. At some point, Lindy may do a reading and we can take questions from you too. If you'd like to ask a question, you can use the Zoom chat function. And if you hover your mouse over the bottom of the screen, you'll see the chat icon, which looks like a comic strip bubble. If you click on that, a panel will show up at the side of your screen and you can enter your question. Note that there is an option to send your question to everyone, which means everyone viewing at home can see it. You can also just send the question privately to me and Lindy, the panelists, if you'd like your question to remain anonymous. And this is probably a good time to remind everyone that we are recording today's session. So I am just going to ask the question, where are you watching from today? So which city are you in? And I'm hoping some of you can practice your chat function so you'll know how to answer questions. And waiting for the answers to start rolling in. Maybe we have a shy bunch. Oh, here we go. Oh goodness, Arkansas. Wow, West Van. This is so exciting. Burnaby, White Rock. Oh, this is fabulous. We clearly are an international program today that is so wonderful. Lindy and I were chatting that, you know, if we'd been having this pre-pandemic, we would have had Lindy in the library and that would have been wonderful too. But one of the few advantages of the Zoom webinars means that everybody can watch from anywhere. So we're so thrilled to have people from all over, not just from our own little district here. Anyway, Lindy, welcome. I would like to start our chat this afternoon about asking you about the name you've given to your publisher, Shangalolo Books. And why would you name your publishing arm after a worm? Well, Julie, thanks for having me. And firstly, thank you for making me in that introduction sound almost grown up and adult. I don't feel like that most of the time. Shangalolo is in South Africa, it's a millipede, another name for a millipede. And it's got hundreds of legs. I don't know how many. And so when I finished writing Vegas, the publishing world was very different 10 years ago to what it's like now. And getting a book out in the world, which is what I decided I was gonna do on my own, felt like having 100,000 legs and just the legs not knowing where they were going and what they were doing. So I thought that was pretty good metaphor for the publishing process at the time. I also do quite like ugly bugs. And we were living when we lived in a place called Umslanga in South Africa. There were lots of Shangalolos there and my son used to pick them up and his little fat fingers would break them in half accidentally and I do believe they regenerate. I'm not sure if that's entirely true but I'm going to have to believe that so that I don't think of all these murdered little Shangalolos to hang on. But that's why Shangalola just, it felt like all these pieces of putting a book together and getting it out. And now I can't change it and make it sound fancy, it's there forever. Well, it gives it a salt of the earth kind of vibe to it as well. So that's great. Lindy, your first book was a novel and then of course, the common wife is a memoir. I was wondering if you might talk about the differences about writing the two of them. Well, when Vegas was finished and it is supposedly fiction, those who know me know that there's a lot of truth in there. When I finished it, I gave it to my daughter, Kate and she was in high school and she read it. We were actually going to Vegas. It was the year after it came out and we were going as a family to Vegas. So I gave it to her on the plane to Reed and she finished it very quickly because as we know it's a quick read and she said to me, mom, you can't just add a kid and call it fiction. But it didn't seem to bother her, all the things that were in it. So in fact, that is, it is fiction. But I did that because it was the only way I could say some of the really hard things I wanted to say. It's very much easier telling the truth when it's fiction. I could say things as Lucy that I really could not at the time have said as myself. This one actually started out as fiction too until I found the literary agent that I worked with and she kept saying to me, but did this happen? And I would say to her, yes, it happened. And she said, well, why are you calling it fiction? Why aren't you doing a memoir? And that was very scary to me. The process is probably very similar in terms of just getting the story out, but I have found that it's harder to make sense of real life because when you're writing a memoir, it is real life and it isn't as tidy as a book. There is no neat, happy ending. So that was hard for me to think what to leave in and what to leave out. Bearing in mind, it has to be the truth, but that there are other people involved in your story always. So it's my story, but I must be really careful in that I don't inadvertently tell someone else's story without having eyes permission. So those were the difficult things. It's without a doubt easier to write fiction because it's fiction, no one's gonna come and knock on your door in the middle of the night. So yeah. There's a strange irony in that fiction can be truer than non-fiction, which is exactly the opposite of what the names would imply. Yeah, it was so much easier to write the absolute horrible black truth in Vegas because I hid behind Lucy and Lucy could say things that, and what I found out afterwards in going to book clubs was that Lucy's truth was so many of our truths. And that, but I needed to be Lucy and not me in order to say those really hard things. Yeah. Yeah, wow. Well, that's, to me, that's just fascinating from the, as a librarian know, I have so many people who refuse to read fiction because it's not true. And yet really, I try to tell folks, but it's actually truer than non-fiction can be, but they don't believe you. So it's wonderful to get that affirmation from an author. So that's, to me, I just find it fascinating. Lindy, again, I know in some of our chats beforehand that some students from Glen Eagle School that you had been working at in West Van sent you off with a little bit of a goodbye gift when you left. I wonder if you could talk about that for a bit. I can. I was working in a number of schools actually on the North Shore. I was working for a non-profit organization. And what I got to do was go into schools and sit in circle. And we'd have these really wonderful conversations. A lot of the students, we did it across like from kindergarten to grade 12, but this particular group was a group of great sixes and the sevenths. And every week I'd go in and we'd sit in a circle have a talking piece and have a question. And then each person would get a chance to share whatever they wanted around the question. And I had told them that I was gonna do the Camino. And we talked a bit about a pilgrimage and what it entails. And obviously I didn't tell them that I was going because I was leaving my marriage. I just told them I was doing this pilgrimage. And before I left, they sent me off with each of them had written a question on a cue card. They didn't put their names on. So I didn't know who had given me what. And they said, because they felt that I needed something to think about while I was walking. They clearly knew me really well. So yeah, so what I did is I had this little baggie of cue cards and I put it in Petunia who's sitting right next to me there. And I didn't look at them before the time. So what happened is in the morning I would wake up wherever I was and just pick one from this little plastic baggie. And that would be my thought, my thinking for the day. And I don't know, did you want to, did you want me to put on the slideshow? Let's do the slideshow. Can I ask a clear, just a point of clarification. So you would just choose a random like question out of the bag every day. And that would obviously form your thought for the day. And yet you managed to find such things on those days that matched up perfectly with the question. It was incredible. And I would, some days obviously I walked alone. The first 10 days I was with people and they saw what I was doing. So we would do it as a group. So we'd be walking somewhere and somebody would say, what's the question for today? And then every now and then I'd be really magnanimous and let someone else put their hand in my baggie and take a question. And we had the most incredible conversations. The one conversation about aliens, I think what you think about coming onto earth that day. Because obviously you meet people and you walk with some and then you don't walk with them again. And that particular day there was a young boy from Poland. And he had literally walked out of his door in Poland and just kept walking. I think by the time I bumped into him he'd already walked 1800 miles. It was some, and he had everything on his back. He had pots and pans. He had his tent. It was incredible. And he, the insights he had into what aliens would say if they were to come to earth was incredible. And I mean him and I, there's so many stories that didn't make it into the book but I walked with a whole lot of bracelets on my arm and I would give them away along the way. So yeah, so people would comment on them and I'd give them away. Most of them were actually from South Africa. And him and I exchanged, I gave him a bracelet and he gave me, it was a laminated sheet with four leaf clovers that he'd found in the Alps. So yeah, those questions were so, they just added a whole new dimension to conversation on Camino. What an incredible gift from those kids. So yeah, well, let's take a look at your slideshow, Lindy, because I know we've got some of those in there. So Lindy will just share her screen with all of us. And what I'll do is I'll go through this fairly quickly. They're not a lot. And if anybody has a question about something you see, just pop it in the box. I'm terrible at multitasking, so I'm in a real line, Julie, to keep an eye on it. And I will try to keep an eye on it. Yeah, yeah, so I will just start the slideshow quickly. So this is the first question that I randomly picked out. And if you've ever been to Heathrow, you'll recognise that little orange car from Heathrow. So I was sitting in the terminal there. And question one, what was your favourite childhood memory? I just added a few photos, because if you've read the book, you will know it's filled with the answer to that question. OK, so here's how serendipitous these questions were. This is Portugale, which is the place where I started off. There's the transporter bridge. And this little thing underneath is actually what carries the people and whoever's travelling across the river. This little building here, if you've read it, is the information centre where Matthias opened the door, looking like an angel on that first day. So while I was waiting, this was the question I picked sitting on Petunia. Why are you doing this? And honestly, it couldn't have been a better question for the first day. And I really, at that point, did not have a clue what was coming. This picture here somewhere in there is the horse that I spotted that I was so terrified of. So this is the first night that the beds in the first place where I spent the first night was all there. And a lot of the Camino is like this, just filled with bunk beds. Oh, this is a question. If you were from another planet, what would you think of Earth if you ended up here? So many questions, so many answers that day. And again, if you could go back in time and change something, what would you change? It was literally like these children had looked into my life and in my head and my heart. And there were so many things that I wanted to change, which was the reason I was doing it, but I thought to keep it light today. That is the headiest turquoise wedding dress. I could not put it in the slide. So that is definitely one thing I would change. Another, some more questions. What is the meaning of life? Why do you think you're on Earth? And I just want to emphasize these children were 11 and 12-year-olds when they wrote these questions. And here's a biggie. Think carefully, is the human race good? I added the green nun. And I think it was in Laredo that she was hanging in the convent. So this is a big one through the whole book. Is the human race good? This one I added. My question is, if you could go anywhere you want, where would you go? I put this photo in here because there is the Avenging Angel. This was Father's Day. And you can just spot the Avenging Angel overlooking the cemetery there. And I'm trying to think that was in Comias. Another big one. Is it worse to fail at something or never attempt it in the first place? And I had somebody request these photos before today. So I wanted to look very carefully at the terror on this face. That was the very first burlesque performance. And this one was the one on Granville Island where that young woman reached out to me and somebody just happened to shoot that take that photo at the exact time as she was reaching out. So clearly, you know my answer to that one. This was a really interesting question. This was the last night I spent with the people that I'd been walking with for the first 10 days. So we had fairly good conversations for the entire 10 days. And somebody picked that question up and we'd answered really, we've spoken a lot about all the questions before. And when it came to this one, nobody wanted to answer. Most of the people walking that day were all partners. So we all had either a fiancee or a husband or a someone at home, but everybody was actually walking on their own. And nobody wanted to answer that question, which was really interesting. And I love that it was signed by Mr. X. This was the centurion. So I was about to start my primitivo. So it's the day I got really lost. And I love this. I'm writing to, if you could change one thing in your life, what would it be? And if you had the chance to relive your life, what would you do differently? And again, it's so interesting to me that these questions, these questions for 11 year olds are so incredibly wise and old. They just really blew me away. What is the best thing you've ever done? Hmm, a lot of thoughts I had here. Every time I had a think, I kept realizing that the things I thought I'd done well, I actually really didn't do terribly well, but these are the things that are most meaningful. A big one, where would I rather be? And just to show you how beautiful it is there, a lot of the road was like this. But where would I rather be was also a big question. So this was the day after I got lost and honestly did think that I would die on the mountain. I added this because it's the little post that says smile, but it actually doesn't say smile. It says five mile, but at the time I really needed it to say smile. So this was the question I just happened to pick out and I remember picking it lying in the bunk bed. If today was your last day, what would you do? And it had been the day before that I'd got so lost. And it was just such a great reminder of, yeah, all the things that I haven't done. There's our Sivende Timstone with all the little daisies. And this one is also was just such a beautiful, this was the day before I got to the cathedral and it says, and I really was feeling done. If you're tired, why keep going? Is there a reason? And like you said, Julie, just the fact that I picked that on that day, there was something weird at work. This is unfortunately the cathedral in the day over summertime. There's just too many people. I wanted the community myself. If I'd done all the work, done all the trudging, why did God not make it empty for me or for myself? But I guess that's not how it works. There it is the next morning. So that was on my way out. And it was just beautiful, just beautiful. And the moon is waxing, still not quite full. Again, if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and lie? Oh, and that's the little certificate that you get after you queue up for what feels like 100 years. So this beautiful picture, this is when annoying Tasmanian Tom and I were walking together. And this just came, it literally comes up out of the blue. You're walking on still dirt road and suddenly this beautiful place pops up. So right at the end there, there's a little stone bench, which is the way we sat and chatted. You walked through here and there's not, and you can see it's bright sunny day. I don't know what time it was. It was at least mid morning. We did not see a soul. There wasn't a dog, a cat, a person, nothing. It was the weirdest, weirdest thing. So, I think what this says is, when you do what you do every day, who do you do it for? So this was Faye and it's in the book at CEE. You just happened to pronounce it Faye and that's the church that Tom wouldn't go into with me. And this is the circle of shells that I had, that I built on the beach that night. What I didn't, I eventually took the question part out of the book once I worked with this agent and I can maybe chat about that later, but what I didn't share in the book was that all these questions, that night when I got to date was a full moon, as I said in the book, but I actually burnt all the questions there. So I'd carried them with me all the way and it was the full moon, it was the anniversary of my son's accident. And I thought, okay, these questions have been so beautiful, I've carried them all the way. I'm gonna burn them at the full moon. And I don't think I've actually told the students that, but I did that. So this is actually a little video, but I'm not gonna play it now. And yeah, so one by one, I just burnt the questions. And I think this one said, if you could change anything in the world and know you would succeed, what would you change? This particular group of students, we'd had some beautiful discussions around the environment and around social justice issues and kindness and war and poverty. So that my sort of my head was in that frame of mind when I saw this. What I didn't know is that if you walk to Finisterra, which is the end of the earth, you get another certificate, so two for the price of one. Here's a little kitten that was in the church when Tom and I danced. And this is actually the church where he came into the church, his first church in 40 years and he got shouted at. This question, if you just met someone, what would you want them to think was your strongest quality? Initially, I thought it said strangest quality. And of course I had a bunch of responses for that. But the strongest quality, I actually really love this question and it would be really lovely if out of all these questions, you take this one back with you. If you just met someone, if you just met someone, what would you want them to think was your strongest quality? And again, it's just, those children are so incredible and give me so much hope for going into the future. I had to put this one because this is the first dream, my first private dream. I had hung washing, which is just such a big thing. There's the Audrey Hepman picture and this was the day after I had spent the night over the little pink toilet because I was a little picky. So this is the last question, the day that I went to the lighthouse and it's by Rosie, who was the only one who wrote her name. And my question is, if you were to represent yourself into a quote, what quote would you choose to relate to? And it just so happens that this is the book in the lighthouse at the ends of the earth, Zero Kilometers. Well, you meant to write something. So I had no idea what to write, but after those two days in Phineas Darra, I went up and I wrote my quote to represent myself as Rosie had asked me. So what I just discovered today was this book was never going to be written. When I did the Camino, it was to hunt down God and to get some kind of answer from God. And I wanted God to literally give me the map to my destiny that this was never going to be a book. I realized today that this photo is two years after the walking of Camino. I did the Camino in 2015, summer. This photo was taken in October of 2017, so two and a half years later. Yeah. And that's only the start. If you have a look here, there's nothing written on the wall. So what I did after two and a half years, I realized this book had to be written. So all these little orange strips are the questions. There were 27 questions. They're on the board and they're 27 chapters. The red, the green and the pink are the different time frames. So the Camino, the past. I can't remember what the other one was. Maybe even, yeah, I can't remember exactly. And then these were where I put my cue cards. That's what it eventually looked like. And I'm going to stop my share because, there we go, I'm gonna stop my share. Just because it wasn't a book that was gonna be written. But those questions, I had been writing all along. There was another book that I was planning to write. But those questions actually became the backbone for this book. So each question led to a place on the Camino, what is happening on the Camino and then the backflash. Because I don't know if anybody has ever done the Camino or been a pilgrim. But that walking process, what happens in your head is really weird. And you just do, you have memories there. I had memories. I remembered things there that I had not thought of. And I just didn't even know that I'd forgotten. So then it became something I had to do. And I eventually did remove the questions because I then worked with a literary agent who said, it was just a confusing issue. And like I said, writing a memoir is very different to writing fiction because you have to try and make sense of life. And honestly, I have still not made sense of this. But the suggestion was to remove the questions, which made me a little sad, but I have still connected with the children again. So that's good. I love the fact that in many ways, the children's questions kind of shaped the book. Well, not kind of, did shape the book for you. And even though in the end you took them out, nonetheless, they formed the backbone in a way of the story that you could then flesh out. They really did, yeah, it's their book. And incredible, as you say, the wisdom and the depth of these young kids. I don't know that many of us watching today would have come up with as wonderful questions to ponder for someone on a pilgrimage. I'd like to ask you next, Lindy, about walking a little bit, because you mentioned that this was a pilgrimage. Do you think, in today's day, walking is suddenly like being studied by scientists and it's physical and emotional and mental benefits are being touted. But do you think that if this had just been a walk and not a pilgrimage, it would have been different? Or do you think if you'd been doing, I don't know, the West Coast Trail or something, do you think it would have been a similar experience? Firstly, I have never liked walking. I have never really liked walking. If you'd said to me, walk, why? Why I've got a perfectly good car in the driveway, why would I walk? So I think there was a lot, it was the penance part of it. I wanted to do something hard. I wanted to do something that made me re-evaluate life. And like I said, I really wanted to find God and have it out with him. And I guess a pilgrimage is a good place to do that. That's what I thought, except God stayed away. I think he was scared of me. But having finished the pilgrimage, and it was really interesting because people I met along the pilgrimage, there was a very small percentage of people who were doing it for religious reasons. And I'm going to distinguish between religious and spiritual, but the actual religious aspect, there were very few people doing it for that. A lot of people who I met there have gone on to do the Camino every year since then. And it's such a cheap holiday. You stay, like you can live on 10 euros a day. They've got gorgeous three course pilgrim meals and you can have tons of wine. So a lot of people do it for the exercise, for the camaraderie and just to escape from real life. It's a really, it gives like a legitimate excuse to walk away from your family. Since coming back, it was really weird, the first few weeks being here and just not getting up and walking. So I have resumed the walking again. I'm a really big stumper. I'm not a pretty walker. So I really stumper around West Vancouver, but I have to say if there's a similar, it doesn't matter where you walk, whether it's the Camino or whether it's here or whether it's the West Coast Trail. I think it's that state of mind of just being, just taking a step out of your day and out of what has to be done. And it's almost a selfish thing. I'm going for a walk and letting things swirl around in your head, whether God's there or not, yeah. I think particularly during the lockdown in our own pandemic times, in the last few months that the walk has really entered a lot of our vocabularies as something so important to do. And particularly in the days when folks were working from home so much, the days that I work from home, it was like get up at six a.m., get at least 40 minutes out. And again, when you got off at six in the afternoon or in the evening, make sure you go out for another walk just to kind of restore your balance somehow. Yeah, otherwise you'd grow into that chair. What did I say to someone earlier? Sitting is the new smoking. So yes, yeah, not good, not good. Lindy, I think I mentioned this to you before. But I remember in the book you talk about, gee, what bad things you've done and you really need to do this penance and a tone for what you've done. And I remember reading the book and thinking, getting to the end and thinking, what bad thing did she do? So maybe I wanted to ask you about, do you wanna talk about how hard we are on ourselves? And do you think that might be a difference between and I'm making generalizations here, men and women, are women, are we too hard on ourselves sometime? Not just judging ourselves, but judging others too. Yeah, so my disclaimer, not everything made it into the book. And I have to. We'll meet later. And it's so interesting because there have been a number of versions of this book. And along the way I've sent it to different people, the first person I sent it to actually was my sister-in-law. And so she's my husband's sister. And I said to her, this is what I'm planning on doing. I need you to read this and tell me, as your brother's sister, what do you think? Because the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt anyone. And so there was three scenes in that first version, not based on what she said, but based on how my story evolved in my own head that I actually removed. The one was because it was my husband's story. And I thought, I'm already going out and blabbing my ridiculousness to the world. I don't want to do it on behalf of someone else too. You know, I can push the boundaries, but I must know my stopping point. So I removed, and that was actually probably one of the most crucial scenes in the first draft. Then I removed two more, but I removed them for my daughter because the one was actually in Santiago where I saw a woman beggar and she was heavily pregnant. And so I took that scene into sort of unwanted pregnancy. And then I had a related scene of my own, but I had so much guilt around that. And I thought to myself, you know, the last thing I want is for my daughter to read this, find herself in the same position someday and think that she has to have the same amount of guilt that I have. So I took that scene out as well. I actually just recently told her about that because guilt is such an overpowering unnecessary thing most of the time, but to get back to your question, I don't know if it is a male female thing. I think obviously in my case, religion played a big part in what a good person looks like and then that stuff you just take in by osmosis of how your mother and your father talk about other people and what is not a common woman. And my experience was that it's up to the woman to take the high ground. And I think going to a convent entrenched that a little that there are things good girls do. And I never heard that because I didn't have a brother. I don't know what to say that the boys schools. Yeah, so I speak for myself. I think certainly it was because I was a girl, but I don't know potentially there are men out there who have that same unrealistic expectation of what it is to be a good person in the world. Yeah, I don't know. The other thing that we had talked a little bit about is and I know we have a lot of women watching us today is sort of the impact of menopause and on the whole situation in terms of, well, I guess you always want to say of a stereotypical almost midlife crisis. I wish someone had told me that there's this thing called menopause because looking back now, I think possibly a lot of it was to do with hormones and I think I actually do say that in the book, but I say it in a joking way that surely one is above one's hormones. You can't blame hormones on bad behavior, but it's really, and I think one of my favorite people, Carl Jung, who talks about this wool we hit in terms of reevaluating where we've been, where we're going and going into those places that we've never been before, looking what he calls the shadow and the dark side, which is why I have the white and the black wolf in the book. Yeah, I just think I don't know if it's a combination of things or whether it happens. We have these existential crises at various times. Mine just happened. Actually, mine continues. I can't even blame menopause. It's continuing and I'm done with menopause. But I really wish I feel it's something we don't talk enough about, that there are these things that are happening in our bodies and we feel like we're going crazy and it's not just me. I've since found out it's a whole bunch of people. Yeah. Well, that's why sharing this with others may improve things for others too. Lindy, I was hoping that you might read a little something for us and we'll let you choose whichever section you'd like to read from. Well, since we were talking about menopause, I think you've got a whole bunch of stickies. I wasn't sure. Oh, let me go with this one. Okay, it is chapter nine and I'm not going to read a whole lot of it. It is the beginning of menopause. Indulging in existential crises is the birthright of the privileged. It was a latte that triggered my crisis. I tripped over the dog and my coffee ended up on the off-white living room rug. Under normal circumstances, a spilt beverage would not send me over the edge but Leonard Cohen was singing about light and dark and bells ringing and signs. He was singing about doves and freedom and cracks. He was singing about me. So that Wednesday morning in my navy blue eco-harver cottage with the minivan in the driveway, sun shining on the magnolias and Leonard singing my life, I indulged. I had put my destiny on hold for marriage, motherhood, and life in the suburbs and I had done it willingly with just a dash of martyrdom but now I was faced with the irrefutable fact that I had done nothing with my life. I'm not sure how long I stood there sobbing, watching the stain spread, turning the white rug black. The dog went pit, the cat slunk away. Leonard sang, my raping continued, loud and ugly. Pull yourself towards yourself. My mother's words had worked before and they worked this time too. The coffee would not miraculously climb back into the bun, mug, not even Jesus managed to do that, did he? I went in search of the carpet cleaner. Later that night, coffee stain more or less removed, family fed, dishes done, house in relative order. I sunk into bed as my head hit the pillow, everything I had not done flushed before me. The voice of reason that lives somewhere in my frontal lobe screamed at me through my suburb an angst. The world is full with victims of violent crimes, it yelled. People imprisoned in poverty unable to feed their children incapable of paying for medication that could improve their quality of life. Women with no education, abusive partners, no way of escaping the political turmoil in which they live. Those women have no time for a midlife crisis. Every day is a crisis, a real one. Now get over yourself. I ignored the voice. This was no time for logic. Instead, faced with all that unlived life, I got up and cleaned the fridge, the stove, every wine glass we owned. I rearranged furniture and then I found the kitchen scissors. How hard could it be to cut your own hair? 10 minutes later, staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, the answer to that question was clear. The next day I crossed Lyons Gate Bridge and started a professional to fix the mess on my head. I found Lyla in a funky salon close to the Seabass Terminal. She was dressed entirely in black. Tiny neon skulls glowed from me to her black fingernails. She had just had a cancellation. I made myself comfortable in the scratched up leather chair in front of Lyla's mirror. I cuddled myself, I apologize. That's a relief, she smiled, revealing one gold incisor. So I don't have to recommend that you sue your last stylist. I laughed. We would get along just fine even though she looked no older than 12. What are we doing? she asked, as if I would somehow be involved in the process. Whatever you want. I was tired of making decisions. Lyla brought me a pile of magazines and rotated my chair away from the mirror. 45 minutes later, just as I was starting to panic about my parking expiring, she turned me around again. Sweet Jesus. So Lyla asked, I leaned toward my reflection. While it wasn't as short as my wedding day pixie cut, it had done the same for my eyes and my cheekbones. I looked alive again as though I had a purpose. Lyla had shaped my head tightly around my head with wispy bits around my jaw. Something shifted in my spine. A new kind of energy, sparkly. I love it. I really wanted to tell Lyla I loved her. Still trying to name the Folly King in my vertebrae, I left the salon. It was unusually hot for March in Vancouver and the stray hairs are making my neck itch. I drove back across the bridge with all the windows open. The rear view mirror angled to see myself. My neck was angry red. Was that why my eyes were so bright? I parked the minivan in the driveway and went to collect the mail. A horn honked. It was Adam. We had made through one of my son's sports teams and our paths had crossed a few times over the years. I waved, dropping my hydrable. He slowed down, parked his red convertible across the street. And by the time I picked up the envelope, he was standing next to me. Hey, he said, long time no see. His smile was dazzling. The kind of dazzling you found in fashion magazines, not in driveways in the suburbs. Hi. I hope my tie-dye T-shirt was camouflaging the sweat trickling down my stomach. I think we chatted about our summer plans, the kids, his work. But I can't be sure. His closeness kept interrupting my focus. He didn't seem to need as much personal space as I did. I should go, he said, after a while. Nice to see you. You're looking good. He leaned in to hug me, which was confusing. It made me anxious. Did I smell bad? You two are replied stiffly. I then moved away as if to go, then turned back towards me, taking a step closer, right into my space bubble. I actually felt it pop. I've always been attracted to you, he said, matter of factly, into my strawberry neck. I said, but it didn't matter in the least that we were both married to other people, or that he was gorgeous or younger than me. My stomach was burning up. Was he trying to make a fool of me? What did that even mean attracted to you? I had visions of bees and wildflowers. Say something, God damn it. Completely flustered, all I could say was, thank you. Not again. The driveway palaver resembled all too closely. Another embarrassing thank you when I was 13, in front of Father Ray, wearing a hideous white ruffle dress. My friend Leanne was right beside me. She was not wearing a hideous ruffle dress, because unlike me, she had taste. We'd endured evening Bible study classes once a week for months, and were at last being rewarded with first communion. We did not yet know that ours was a second rate communion, that the bread and wine in the Methodist Church was only pretending to be Christ's body and blood. Father Ray put the wafer in my hand, and I said, thank you. I may even have popped a little curtsy. Leanne snort giggled. I turned red. I didn't know that you weren't meant to say thank you. Wasn't that rude? Leanne told me later that communion protocol was to say nothing. I wish I'd remembered the communion incident before I said thank you to Adam in the driveway. But once I'd said that I couldn't unsee it, so I blushed. Exactly as I had in front of Father Ray and God Almighty more than 30 years ago. I'll call you, let's go for lunch soon, he said. Magnanim seeks, ignoring my scorched cheeks. Okay, what? Cheers, he saunted off, leaving me in a sweaty pile of angst next to the cedar tree. Had any of the neighbors seen us? According to my mother and auntie Betty, this wasn't the way things worked. I did not dress like someone who encouraged other people's husbands to walk into my driveway. I never wore too tight shirts, and I didn't even own a skirt. Adam must have been kidding. Pulling your leg, my father would have said. I shook my newly cut head like a traumatized dog and pushed the awkward driveway dance from my mind. The little serpent sashayed up my spinal cord. It was the same feeling I'd had when I saw myself in the salon mirror earlier. It felt like glitter, promise. I just suddenly had a thought, Julie. Leanne, who I talk about in the book, is the only person in the book who has her real name. Yeah, she was at school with me in elementary school and we stayed friends, she's been in South Africa, so she's the only real name in the book. Everybody else's name I have changed. Changed, to protect the innocent. Yeah. Well, that's probably the kind thing to do, and again, I think we're too hard on ourselves. I used to know someone who said, when in doubt, say thank you. So, I think you've done, you know, you really did the right, you did say the right thing. Who can blame someone for saying thank you? Thank you, Julie. Anyway, we're getting toward the end of our time, so I'll just ask everyone watching at home, if you have any questions for Lindy, this would be a great time to have them answered. So, if anyone wants to type in a question, please do so. And while we're waiting for that, Lindy, I'm gonna ask if you have any other big walks or pilgrimages in your future? Not right now. Not right now? Well, nobody has a big travel plans in their future, near future right now. There are, there are pilgrimages I would love to do. There's Rumi, I love the Sufi poets, and I think Rumi has, in Turkey, you can actually follow Rumi's footsteps. I'm having a little harder time getting my husband to agree that that's a safe place to go right now. But that is definitely on my to-do list. Okay. I remember reading a newspaper article once, and it was all about pilgrimages, and that, of course, the Camino is getting so crowded these days, as you could see, we could see from your photo of the cathedral that, during day. And one of the ones that fascinated me, and again, it would certainly have to be a summertime walk, was, I think, the way of St. Olaf, up in the Scandinavian countries, which I thought sounded quite intriguing. You would have to do that, definitely, in summer. I think it's going to be a short window. Walking between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day in the cold doesn't sound too appealing, but it certainly sounds like another intriguing walk. And in the meantime, we can just walk in our neighborhoods and get the, as we said, physical, spiritual, and emotional mental benefits from walking. Yeah, otherwise, just getting rid of the frustrations, just stomping the frustrations out. There's something really great about that. Yeah, indeed. I see a question. Yes. Obviously, there's a shell on Petunia, the only shell you brought back. It is so symbolic of your journey. So maybe you want to, do you want to show us Petunia and the shell as well? I will. Is that Katie? Katie Nemec? Is that Katie from ballet? Oh my goodness! Good job! Hello, Katie! Okay, so what I did, I bought, and I should have had them, they're little, those little white shells. Let me just get Petunia here. So this is the one. Yeah, this is the one that most people walk with on their backpack. I don't know how they do it, because it's really annoying because it bonks like this when you walk. So this was the one that I got given that I really didn't want, but then I actually bought another one like this. So when I finished it, finished it, the way it works, you have to get the bus back to Santiago, and the streets there just littered with tourist stuff. So I had this already settled. Okay, let me bring another one. And so I bought another one and I gave it to somebody else who was going walking on the Camino. So I had the two, but then I bought a bunch of little ones on the day that we were on the beach and I missed the blessing. I think it was in Laredo. So I had a bunch of little shells. And when I came back, I also had got a big bottle, then a water bottle from the place where I ate the clams and I got so sick. I had that water bottle and I filled that with some white sand. Then when I got back, I actually divided about a whole lot of little containers and I put sand and shells into each little container. And I gave those to some of the kids who had given me questions. Oh, nice. Yeah. I felt really bad taking shells and I thought they may stop me at customs coming in. I didn't know what the rules were, but I figured I've carried my father's ashes in my hand luggage before a little shell is not gonna do anything. So yeah, that's what I brought and I'm singing. We've got another question here. Over the years since your walk, when you have looked at Petunia, what were some of your feelings? Whoa, Chris, big question there. I still go walking with Petunia even when I don't need to. I walk up West Port Hill with Petunia on my back and do groceries and I walked to Horseshoe Bay with my laptop in Petunia. Here, I guess. And I don't even like saying the word great for loud, loud because it sounds so overused, but I'm really so grateful for everything that Petunia represents. Just the time away and time to think and the fact that out of all of that came this little book which has been again such a connective for me with so many people because I see some names here that I have not seen in a really long time and I'm hoping that when this resume thingy is over to connect with, yeah, there are a lot of people on here that I have not seen this, yeah, that Felicity was, sorry to call you out here, Felicity, she was in high school with me. So she noticed who Sister Bernadette really is. So it's, and yeah, I'm seeing moms of children I talk ballet to. I'm just so thankful to everybody who's here and again, connecting through this funny little book that just was an attempt to leave my family. Wow. Well, Lindy, you said grateful is overused, but I do wanna say that we are grateful to you. I think the two of us, we could chat for another hour about all sorts of things, but I wanna thank you so much for joining us and for inspiring us. And of course, thanks to everyone watching at home too for coming along with Lindy on her adventure. You can get more information about Lindy, including how to order her book on her website, Lindy Hughes.com. And I don't wanna speak for Lindy, but I'm sure she'd be happy to provide autographed copies if you'd like. And the library continues to offer virtual programming throughout the pandemic. So I encourage you to check out our website, West Van Library, CEA, or to sign up for our e-newsletter. Thanks to everyone for coming. I can see one last question here from your former student, Katie, about how she can get a book signed by you. Should she just reach out to you through your website, Lindy? Great, so I think that there's that question and anyone who wants to reach out to Lindy can certainly go to Lindy Hughes.com and contact you there. So thank you everyone for joining us on this summer afternoon. We're very grateful that you joined us and thank you to Lindy. If we were here, I know we'd all be clapping, so I'm clapping for all of us. So thank you so very much, everyone. Goodbye and have a great evening. Yes, thanks very much to everybody who came from all around the world. This actually before we go, Julie, this feels like purgatory. I know what purgatory feels like because I can see the names and I just want to bring them and see them and chat with them. Aw. So, I really feel so thankful and special that you made the time today to join us. Please get in touch with me. I'd love to have a real chat, some of you I haven't. And again, Julie, thanks so much for inviting me. It's been really fun. It has been wonderful to have you as a guest. We're so glad to have you close to us in West Van. We're very fortunate, Lindy. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good night. Goodbye, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you.