Lucília, 2 years and 7 months old:

- Mommy, shall we build a house like Daddy's?
- I don't know, Lucília.
- Why?
- Didn't I go to the same school your father went to?
- Really?
- Your father is an engineer. He builds houses, your mother isn't an engineer.
- Only men build houses, right? (she had been observing many constructions)
- No. Women build houses too. Women who are engineers.
- Really?
- Yes.

Sometime in 1960, my grandmother transcribed the conversation she had with my aunt Lucília. I use her as a starting point to try, along with my grandmother, to answer: who builds the houses? Who are the female engineers?
My childhood home was built by my grandfather, Ruy, and my grandmother, Jacy, a woman born in 1930, mother of four, PhD in Sociology of Education, professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and author of teaching materials that, after breaking with a conservatism that saw something very innovative in its content, were used throughout almost all of Brazil. Both at home and in the classroom, she spent her life teaching how to listen, tell, and create stories.
Ruy, despite always supporting his wife's career, once asked: "What are Jacy's little stories compared to someone who builds houses?"
Many years later, he regrets the rhetorical question and expresses: "What are the houses I built compared to Jacy's stories? These are forever."
The house also establishes the values ​​of dreams, which remain even when the house no longer exists. Given his late understanding, Ruy spent the last years of his life trying to republish *Construição do Futuro* (Construction of the Future) – one of the books in the collection written by Jacy – a task that only a true engineer could accomplish.
When I was old enough to talk to Jacy about the things she thought and wrote, her forgetfulness had already begun. Alzheimer's erased recent memories, the way home, the names of her grandchildren and children. Some older memories remained, from childhood, from other houses.
I have also heard other stories about Jacy, stories that I knew in parts, but that I didn't recall when I wanted to remember her. The house was also a place of constant violence, both verbal and physical. As far back as I can remember, and I believe even before that, Jacy's salary was controlled by my grandfather. I remember very well the day when, already in her 70s, I heard her say that she would have been much happier if she had married a woman. Faced with violence, and every time she needed time for herself, Jacy swam.
It's important that these stories are told and narrated. But it's even more important that they don't become central to a woman's story. I always like to remember that my grandmother built houses.

A house is what a person makes of it. A place that shelters daydreams, where it's possible to dream; a place whose existence lies more in affections and stories than in rigid concrete. The house transforms, fluid, just like memory. It deteriorates, loses its vigor, but remains alive as long as there is imagination, as long as there are stories and someone to tell them.
This is a work about all these things, which walk together in the complex and profound story of a woman who made books, who crossed islands, who built houses, and who dreamed deeply.