You ask me to search through the box of memories for something about the beginnings of Insieme. But more than 40 years have passed—the span it takes to go from being a mother to being a grandmother, perhaps even a great-grandmother.
Yet there are sensations that return and help me remember: the sound of footsteps on the stairs at Nazareth climbing up to the mezzanine, that space granted to the fledgling Fede e Luce group; the smell of mimeograph ink mixed with the aroma of pizza by the slice at snack time; the sound of a bell with its own distinctive rings, summoning the sisters; the thud of a basketball, rhythmic and purposeful, as someone in the garden trained for the upcoming game. Halfway between ground floor and first.
This is the atmosphere in which Insieme was born—not something that aspired to be a proper magazine, but rather a simple, nimble tool for weaving bonds among those beginning to live the adventure of Fede e Luce.
It was made of stories, concrete things, of saying "it is possible" where fear or prejudice about disability had stolen the courage to take the next step. Built on sharing, on the need to get out of your own hole and stop wallowing in self-pity. No rhetoric. The windbags stayed quiet.
It gathered the lived experience of many—children and adults alike. It gave voice to small details that sometimes speak louder than the whole. I remember asking two children what they remembered from the first pilgrimage to Lourdes: a very long train, so many people, but most of all Nanni who passed through every car in the evening with a cart, calling out: "Broth, broth!" Yes, after a day on the train and before sleeping in bunks, what could be better than a good hot broth?
And Insieme told the story of the broth too.
Behind the scenes of this magazine was a woman who, without drawing much attention to herself, played a crucial role: Annarella.
A sister of Nazareth, later called "Grandma" by a boy from Fede e Luce and then "Grandma" to everyone and by everyone, she was the one who prepared the masters for Insieme—not on an electric typewriter, but on an old Olivetti where you had to press the keys hard enough to puncture the thin paper that would then let the ink show through (a note for the digitally native who never knew the early days of the mimeograph).
Grandma also mediated our misdeeds when we occupied the mezzanine with Insieme editorial meetings, paying little mind to the hour or the noise.
A woman—certainly not the stereotype of a "nun"—who by her mere presence made the Gospel credible. Few words. A colorful oath when it was called for. Many blessings. And that perpetual smile.
And that trinitarian bond (Mariangela, Italia, Annarella) that testified to a reversal of roles, or the continuity of life. Mariangela and Italia had once been her students. Then she herself placed herself in service of what seemed an impossible enterprise—the work of her former pupils. With much humility.
She spent entire days fighting with the old Gestetner (the mimeograph) when it got too generous with the ink, with sheets of paper that jammed, with pages out of order that were hard to assemble. But once the battles were over, the magazine was ready.
And perhaps it was no accident that Insieme was born at Nazareth. It was contaminated by the value of the place: the Nazareth of Rome. Where small is beautiful. Where the apparent absurdity of an uncommon family (Mary, Jesus, and Joseph—which happens to be the congregation's motto) becomes a school of humility and normalcy. And a place of togetherness. Not just the title of the magazine. But a tangible reality, where difference is a value, where doing things together is the daily style of life. A place where even the absurdity of handicap, of weakness and difference, becomes the warp and weft of true humanity.
