Family has always been at the heart of Ombre e Luci. This year, dedicated to family, we want to renew our commitment: to remind our readers, in a particular way, how vital it is to learn to know and understand from within the life of a family tested by disability.
So we went to dinner with the Ozzimo family. As we sat down to an excellent meal—made all the more homey by a delicious Roman salad the mother had picked herself from the countryside and a wine the father had made—we turned on the recorder and let them talk: Gerardo, Rita, Pablo, and Daniele.
While they spoke, I looked around the room: a small apartment for four people, one of them in a wheelchair. Two bedrooms, a sitting room, a tiny kitchen. Yet listening to them, I felt surrounded by something vast. There was Gerardo's great calm and dignity. Rita's great heart and good sense. Pablo's bright eyes and smile. Daniele's deep sensitivity and honesty.
This year I have heard many words about family—conferences, debates, lectures. But I had not heard what I learned that evening. There was a great story, long and exhausting. There were eyes that spoke their whole intimate, secret life—the kind that cannot be told in words. Around that wheelchair were gestures that spoke of an endless tiredness and repetition. Around that table was the quiet joy of a family that had faced their trial with courage, without sterile complaint; with faith in a life that is truly life only when it is given, one to another, through quarrels and disagreements, through weariness and laughter, through effort and recovery, day after day.
I watched Daniele, a truly gentle giant. Nearly two meters tall, with long dark hair, blue eyes full of light, an open smile. I listened to him talk about his brother, with whom he has always shared a bedroom, about all that this means. What struck me was the naturalness and ease with which he spoke of his joys and his many struggles.
Thank you, Rita, for the strength and peace you have given your family. Thank you, Gerardo, for the calm with which you guide your home. Thank you, Daniele; I wish so many young people could meet you and come to dinner at your house. And thank you, Pablo, for your presence; without knowing it, you have evangelized your family.
- Mariangela Bertolini, 1994
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