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Maria de Fátima Lima (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

All I ever wanted was to be a journalist. 

To chase questions, to listen, to write, to hold moments like light in a frame. 

I once thought that dream was mine alone, sparked in solitude, until I saw it clearly: it was an inheritance. My father lived his life as a journalist and photographer for one of Brazil’s major newspapers. The newsroom, alive with ink and urgency, was where I first stepped into his world. As a child, I wandered those halls, wide-eyed, the air heavy with the scent of ink, the rhythmic churn of machines feeding paper through metallic mouths. As a young woman, I claimed a desk there—my first job, and one I took on with pride. That seat carried history, expectation and love.

His craft called me before I could name it. That hunger to bear witness grew in the spaces we shared: drives to school, movie nights, our family’s cherished Victrola spinning Glenn Miller’s tender notes. He taught me to see through a lens how light enters a small box and becomes memory, how images emerge in the dark, like truths surfacing in silence. Back then, I was just “the boss’ daughter,” unaware of how deeply his presence was shaping me. Not through loud lessons, but through quiet patience—through art passed down like breath.

As I grew, his world became a shadow I both craved and feared. He was steady, reserved, a man of principle shaped by a generation that prized silence over sentiment. “Don’t argue about football, religion or politics,” he would say. “People hold their truths tightly. Silence is kinder.” 

His words became my guide for navigating the world’s sharp edges, a lesson in listening over speaking. When nightmares of ghosts gripped me as a child, he would say, gently, “Do not fear what is gone; it can’t harm you. It is the living, with their hidden edges, you must watch for.”

Only now do I see—his restraint was not distance, but care, shaped by a world that taught men to be stone.

He was clearest about my future. He urged me toward a journalism degree path he had not taken himself, his own craft learned through the newsroom’s rhythm, chasing stories, earning trust. We visited a campus in São Paulo more than once, his hope in every step. I can still feel him in the pavement when I pass. But I chose Tourism Management, drawn to its stability, afraid that chasing stories might leave me—or my two small boys—exposed to a world too unpredictable. I wanted steadiness for them, not the starlight of a dream. 

Time moves unevenly and we were often out of step, like Benjamin Button and his father in that curious tale where one ages backward and the other forward, passing each other in time, yet bound by love. I remember moments I thought were all about disappointment, like the time his car caught fire, right in front of a fire station, of all places. I was behind the wheel, panicking while the smoke rose, and he rested a steady hand on my shoulder, his eyes soft, his words few. That moment, once a source of shame, now feels like a gift—his calm a language of love I was too young to read. Only now do I understand.

The ache lies in what we never said. I wanted to share my pride in carrying his legacy, my regret for the moments we let slip. Those words stayed folded in the silence between us, small offerings I didn’t know how to give. His passing was no crescendo—just a photograph, fading in the light. 

Yet so much of him remains. In writing this, I find him again—on the newsroom steps, beside the Victrola, his hand on my back through every disappointment. I’ve returned to writing: essays, short stories, scripts that live quietly in my heart. Here, in this fragile act of remembering, I finally speak: all I ever wanted was to be a journalist, like you, Dad.

I just didn’t know it then. Through these words, I chase the stories you taught me to see, holding the world, as you did, in a frame. I imagine your eyes, soft as they were, meeting mine. And I know your hope lives on in me, in the questions I ask, in the light I capture.

We have found our rhythm, at last. 

—

My name is Maria de Fátima Lima and writing is my therapy. I believe art makes us better people, offering countless ways to reflect on today’s world, as well as the past and future. I live in New Brunswick, in Atlantic Canada and I work daily with a multicultural settlement agency. What I love most about collaborating with Low Entropy is the freedom to explore subjects I’m passionate about in my own voice.