Katarina Zsófi Cardoso

There’s a little girl, barely a week old, on the island of Bermuda. The road she will walk on is still unclear. The joys and fears in her life - that will set in no matter how much those who love her want to protect her – will come and go and teach her of things she must learn about herself. She will play in the sand and she will draw paintings on the wall and she will utter words that will resemble love. She will smile and laugh and cry and struggle just to make sense of this crazy world. Her little life has now begun and it is up to all of us to make sure she can be whatever she wants to be.

She’s called Zsófi. Her middle name is Zsófi but for me, that’s just as well as calling her Zsófi. Her story starts somewhere in the deep jungle of Communism, or the glory days of the first and perfect love, or maybe the outer space that was only ever conquered by the Little Prince. All that happened was just I meeting a boy who claimed my heart. This boy took me on streets that never ended. He took me to places that never existed. He whispered words that never could have taken more of me. We had everything amidst the engulfing reality of nothing. We were kids and thought that John Lennon was really onto something when he said, “all you need is love”. So we built a world where only he and I existed. Where every word was a promise and where eternity set it. Only time was against us. We were against us. He went left and I went right and our paths never crossed again. He left my life and took something that can never be replaced. To this day, I mourn and celebrate the love that he and I shared. But him leaving allowed someone else to enter my life.

Our love crumbled but the Little Princess came to rescue. He, the silly, the vivacious, the unthinkably imaginative lured the lovely Michelle into his realm. It seems all along he wanted her and I to meet. We both only wanted to have him, but all along, he wanted Michelle and I to have each other. My message to him was always that which the fox told the Little Prince, “you’ve tamed me, you have me, I am your friend”. He passed it on to Michelle. As caring and lovely and beautifully hearted he is, he let another friend share those ever lasting thoughts. And with love in his eyes, he told stories of a girl called Zsófi, who on the other side of the world had him fully and Michelle listened endlessly.

When the timing was right, or when it could not have been any worse, he left. He left Michelle and I alone. So as brave soldiers her and I began to exchange stories. Stories about love, life, future, children, husband, dogs, names, books, things. Last week Michelle’s little girl Katarina was born. Because of love, because of loss, because of a desperate desire to hold on, because of the passion that burns for other people, because of a dream, Katarina got the second name Zsófi.

Not my merit. Not anyone’s merit. This little girl’s story begins with her mom’s friends’ paths that will always be inexplicably tangled. But I hope that little Katarina will once know the story of her second name. I hope that she will read the pages of the Little Prince. And I hope that she will once have a boy love her as much as he loved me.