Light wind

Women, mothers arriving from Peru and Colombia, husbands in dormitories, food that they always cook and that the men come punctually to pick up. Women with slow steps, heavy movements, carry enormous boulders resulting from their emotional relationships and which almost crush them. Yet - apparently - nothing ever happens, smiles on their faces, everything is always normal... Except when they meet their husband with another woman or when they are sick and their man doesn't even go to the hospital to visit them. South American soap operas that unload on their daughters, mothers who let themselves be served in everything: the girls have to clean, cook, look after the little ones... because mothers have the "drama of life" and daughters have the drama of taking care of their mothers!
«I'm 17, I'll be 18 this year, but I absolutely don't want to turn 18, I don't want to take on all these responsibilities, I don't want to be 18 because then I have to!» But already now she is forced, by her heart, by the displeasure of her mother's lowered eyes, by her panic attacks on the subway.
«I'm 20 years old and I've seen my mother like this since I was born. When she was with my father she did nothing but argue, now she does the same thing with this one with whom she had a son. Everything is always the same, I'm tired of living like this, I want to go out, breathe, meet people, live."
18 years and silence, a few tears, a few smiles and then silence flowing again.

17,18, 20 years old! They are cute, smiling, they joke, they love each other, they help each other, they support each other, but as soon as you give a little space to their hearts, they never stop crying. A large gray cloak hovers over their black hair. It takes a little wind to blow it away every now and then: a Saturday afternoon at the Arsenale sorting clothes with other kids, a person who listens to them and helps them unravel their skeins, an evening of dancing in the community, two days on the snow in the mountains with the parish, a prayer said together and the school which is the great redemption!
Husbands let their wives serve them, wives let their daughters serve them... and daughters? Suddenly a memory: my great-grandmother - or perhaps even my grandmother - lived like this in the Piedmont countryside in the first decades of the 20th century, wearing a kitchen apron at 6 years old, siblings and cousins who were born and had to be looked after. Here is the story that repeats itself beyond the boundaries of time and people, but now for these girls there is the wind that helps to sweep away the gray clouds.


Renza Bogiatto
NP March 2024