Made by many hands

In many homes, when you open a wardrobe, a good lavender scent is released into the air.

It comes from the Arsenal of Harmony. As soon as you enter the Hermitage, you are greeted by a purple avenue: it doesn't last long, but the lavender flowers are really beautiful and call together an innumerable variety of insects that awaken for the occasion, especially bumblebees and butterflies of all kinds and shape.
Many young people help us collect it in time, then we let it dry and, finally, the long work begins to shell it branch by branch. Even the reception ladies in Turin help us and together we manage to fill several pillowcases: it is the beginning of a real assembly line. Our mothers light up when they see the sewing machine: give us some jobs! And so much beautiful salvaged fabric brought into the arsenal is cut, sewn and packed by so many different people. A single machine is no longer enough, a real working group is created.

Lavender passes from hand to hand. Giancarla and Umida cut the fabric, Silvana and Nurgul sew the bags, Mariella and Marina fill them, Sara makes a first knot to close them and attach the back tab that Valeri punched, then Marisa and Oxana make the final bow: "Sermig: done in hand". In reality we should say: "made by several hands", hands that simply believe in working together to bring the scent of authentic peace built one piece at a time into many homes. But it doesn't end there: there is Valeria who is about to get married, there are many preparations but he doesn't stop coming to the Hermitage. Here she met two girls and their mothers who became her mothers in a way. The difference between patients and volunteers disappears. She stays together, they go on trips.

We are simply people, friends. Thus was born the desire to have their wedding favors made by them, together with them: vials of tea filled in the morning by the disabled boys and in the afternoon decorated with bows by the girls and their mothers. Even these "made by many hands"

Maria Claudia Brunello
Arsenal of Harmony
NP November 2022