Patricia Ombretta Catazola

Patricia Ombretta Catazola is a blind woman with a soft smile.  I meet her in a tiny coffee shop in the small village in Northern Italy where my apartment is located. Within a minute, she reaches out to clasp my hands in hers.  As an American, this feels overly intimate, but I don’t pull away.  She smiles and her unfocused gaze and the way she outlines my fingers with hers tells me she’s blind.  After a moment, she pats my hands and says I have “...piano hands.” I don’t know what that means, but I thank her anyway because she seems happy with her declaration.   

It is my second day in Italy. She had a twin sister who died, a fact she tells me within moments of meeting me, as if it’s part of her very core and it must be known.  “I am a twin.”  And her spine stiffens a little with pride as she smiles.  Rosana was her name.  

After a moment, she says she wants to feel my hair to “see” if it's long.  She laughs when she touches it. I laugh too and she says my laugh is beautiful.  She says she loves laughing and then laughs heartily to demonstrate.  

I run into Patricia a handful of times during my time in Italy. I always sit with her and have coffee.  Each time, she touches my hands, touches my hair, and tells me a bit more about Rosana.  She is easily one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.  

Story worth reading

All of our lives are a story.  Over these last 14 weeks, I've traveled through 14 countries. I've read the stories of many kings, queens, princes, princesses, emperors and empresses. Sometimes, they were riveting stories and I could barely tear myself away from the museum or castle afterwards. But other times, I was looking for the exit after just a few minutes. She was born. She lived. She died. Booooooring!

We all have those same three lines.  But how did she live? Did she live with passion and reckless abandon or timidly, meekly? Was she a liar, a bank robber, a good woman, a sexpot, a combination of all of those things? Was she interesting? Fabulous? Kind? Funny? 

As I blogged throughout my European trip, I had one common question in the back of my head…"Is this a story worth reading?”

Maybe it’s because I don’t have children.  The sheer act of creating another human life means you have someone to remember your name, tell your story, keep your belongings in a chest in their attic and pass along your china to their children. If I never have kids, who will remember my story?

And perhaps it's also because as of late, I’ve been surrounded by only the stories of kings and queens, who are remembered and celebrated in a thousand ways – museums, statues, books, poems, prose… that I realize just how insignificant my life may be.  There will (likely) never be a plaque with my name on it or a statue in a square anywhere.  I’ve never wanted to be famous – not for one day of my life – but the idea of being an insignificant, forgotten blip in the scheme of the universe is sort of a bummer, too.

The only thing I've ever secretly dreamed of becoming is a successful writer. I love to cozy up with a book, dive in and explore the world the writer has created for me. As a reader, I adore the idea of other readers curled up in their favorite chair with my book, devouring each word I've written, hungry for more. Oh, I'd love to be a writer! To write a book that becomes mainstream...to see strangers with my book in their tote bags, or reading my book at a cafe. To see my book in a news stand or a library shelf. I dream of writing a character that everyone feels they know personally, someone like Harry Potter, or Stephanie Plum, or one of my childhood favorites, Harriet the Spy.  How strange and wonderful it must feel for millions to know a person that you created in your mind.

I’m going to continue writing, musing and telling stories as I see them.  Maybe I'll never get married, and I'll probably never have kids. But I will always be writing. It's what I love. It's what stirs my soul. But, as I travel throughout Europe, without a job, mortgage, or a care in the world, what I’ve come to realize is that I’m truly concerned with something else entirely.

It's not about writing a story worth reading. It's about living a LIFE worth writing about.