My home

«I'm already better if you show me / the world as you see it / I don't need a spaceship, I know / My house or your house / What's the difference? There isn't / But what is my home? / From heaven it's the same, I swear". So goes the song by Ghali, protagonist of the latest Sanremo. He questioned me a lot, because it makes me deeply uneasy to think about how lucky we are to have a safe and welcoming home, in the "right part" of the world, without great risks to our lives or that of our family.

A beautiful experience that my wife Giulia and I have been having for a few years now is the Moncalieri shelter, a place where mothers with children can find shelter and above all a starting point for their lives . Living together is difficult, but it is also a great opportunity to build relationships, even more delicate because the house is a place of passage (more or less long), difficult like any change, but with the awareness that every step in life can be decisive !

Our challenge is to try to create union between the many children and young people who find themselves living together without knowing each other, with different languages and cultures. With them also former guests and boys and girls from the area involved with us, with whom we organized moments of entertainment and sharing. One day one of them wrote to me: «The word “surprise” comes to mind, because for me it was surprising to see that so many children and young people (different in character and age) managed to make me experience a wonderful evening. She also surprised me how, despite the language difficulties, we all managed to understand each other in the end and be together in harmony."

I have learned better what it means to be a family and, right now that our couple is preparing to welcome a little girl, I feel that it is more important than ever to become fathers and mothers of many children and teenagers who in their young lives already they go through difficult storms. From these experiences I understand more clearly what "my home" means: that place where it no longer matters where I was born and perhaps not even how long I will stay, but only the desire to share that piece of heaven that is the same for everyone.


Roberto Lerda
NP March 2024