Before I was a writer, I was a thief.
Catarina is mysterious to me. Daughter of German immigrants, mother of five, and the great grandmother I don’t remember. Although she passed just before my sister was born, I know I met her because there are pictures and there are stories. Stories of a young Lu- maybe one but not yet two years old- and her fascination for her great grandmother. I’m told she was everything, and I have no doubt she was. I would grow up looking up to a lot of women in my life, related or not, but I think she was the very first.
A huge tradition in Brazil is having cafe da tarde, or an afternoon coffee. Women would invite other women over and serve them usually a simple table, with strong coffee, sweet treats, and great company. I was, and still am, a huge fan.
***
Living in a different country now, I don’t have many physical items to remember my childhood by. I only have what I’ve heard. The story goes that on those cafes da tarde, I would sneak behind Catarina and steal the sweet treat she had separated for herself. I was never fond of biscuits, but I was fond of her, and stealing her biscuits was a way I found of getting her attention. I thought I was sneaky, tiptoeing to her chair, not making a sound, but alas you’re not exactly a perfect spy at 18 months old, and so she would notice, but she always pretended she didn’t until the heist was complete, and I could hear her chants from the other room: “Oh my God, we have a thief in the house!”
***
She passed away before my spy training got any better. I never got to memorize the shape of her face or the cadence of her voice. I didn’t even know about the biscuit heists until my mom told me, adding the small but valuable detail that Catarina never liked biscuits either.
When I’m asked who I write for, I always think of her. However, I’m wrong.
I don’t write for Catarina because I don’t know her. She was someone to me once, and now the only way I picture her is through a photo in my grandma’s living room. Short, grey hair styled like my grandma’s. She was tall, I think, or at least taller than most people in my family. I wish there was a way for me to have captured what I felt like stealing those biscuits, what I felt like being held in her arms, so that when I’m told of all the things she meant to me, I feel like she actually did.
***
The heist story is a mere example of probably many versions of myself that I can’t recall. The many people in my life who were my world at a certain point and now are just a distant memory. Maybe I don’t write for Catarina, but I write because of her. Because she made me believe I was the greatest thief in the world, and this probably made me confident at a very early age. Because I was the only great granddaughter she had the pleasure of meeting, and since her, I have not been the only anything to anyone. Because I was so many things to someone, I couldn’t tell you anything about. Her memory makes me yearn for all the things I have forgotten, so I write to never forget a thing again.
I write so I can remember what it feels like to be a nineteen-year-old girl in college. I write so I know the leaves are changing, who my friends are, what we did this week, and who I want to be now. I write so I remember, and so I never have to feel like a huge part of my life is missing like it is with Catarina.
I write for me. More specifically the future me, who definitely won’t be sitting outside of The Dairy Bar on a random Thursday morning after skipping my 8 am and instead getting Dunkin with my roommate and waiting for her to get out of class. I might not be doing those things then, but hopefully by reading about it, I will know what this felt like.
I will know that it’s cold and maybe shorts wasn’t the best idea, that I can see the cows eating breakfast while a father and son are getting scoops (11 am is perfect time for ice cream), and that every once in a while, a bee buzzes near my ear and I jump out of my seat- computer be damned.
Future me will never again have to question what the past me was doing, because the present me is writing everything down for her.
I will never know what it felt like to sneak up behind Catarina and steal the biscuit she didn’t like that I didn’t like either. I will never get to ask her if she set them out within reach just so I could grab them. Still, I write in her honor. Whether a writer, thief, or student, my great grandkids will have more than just oral stories to know me by.
*****
Luiza Zima is an undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut majoring in Journalism and English, with a Creative Writing concentration. Her interests include reading the latest viral novel, playing club volleyball with her friends, and spending time with her pets. Immigrating from Brazil, her family now resides in South Florida, where she has lived for the past nine years.
