I'm not sure what title this piece will have. "Caterina's Evenings"? "Impossible Evenings"? People ask me: "What does Caterina do in the evening?"
What do most twenty-two-year-olds do? They go out with friends or boyfriends and girlfriends. They grab an aperitif, get gelato, order pizza. They go to movies or dancing, to parties.
Caterina loves to dance. She loves pizza—though truthfully she hates sitting around at a restaurant waiting, just like her father. She loves music. She loves going to the cinema (musicals are her favorite, but she'll watch other things too). She loves being around people her own age, as long as it's not too chaotic. Most of all, she loves doing these things without her parents. So what's the problem?
The problem is that Caterina has one crucial limitation: she cannot go out alone. She cannot get to a movie theater, a party, or a nightclub by herself. Her significant disability makes that impossible. Unless someone invites her and takes her, these experiences simply don't happen.
Throughout her teenage years, she has received very few invitations to parties from classmates or friends. There are countless young people like Caterina who would give anything to leave home for an evening—to have a drink with peers, without their parents tagging along. And it's often the parents themselves, the only ones who truly feel the weight of this need, who band together and form associations to create fun activities and outings for their children.
It is through these associations—born when families unite around shared struggles and their children's different disabilities—that so many young people with various neurodivergences can escape their homes and isolation. They break free from the monotony of school, therapy centers, and medical appointments. They experience the thrill of a dance floor, a snowshoe hike in the mountains, even surfing in January, or a night at the bowling alley. Pure, simple fun for kids in Caterina's situation.
One such association is Agsa, which we've been part of for several years. Through them, we organize countless outings and events that are fun for everyone: parents, siblings (caught up in this challenge and our anxiety to solve it), and young people with disabilities. These are breaths of fresh air—moments of carefree joy and shared experience. For many of these events, we've found young volunteers who show up for a whole day, or an evening at the club, ready to spend time with our strange, unpredictable kids. Volunteers with no training, no experience, but so much goodwill and spontaneity that it often creates something magical.
Our kids are difficult. Complicated. Sometimes withdrawn and off-putting. We know this. But if we keep seeing them only as people to "care for," to "supervise," to "educate and rehabilitate," and not as people we can simply have fun with and spend leisure time alongside, there will always be "their world" and "our world."
Often impatient with sitting still and waiting, Caterina managed to watch an entire opera from her box at Rome's Opera Theater, with two lifelong friends, Elisabetta and Flavia.
Often impatient with sitting still and waiting, Caterina managed to watch an entire opera from her box at Rome's Opera Theater, with two lifelong friends, Elisabetta and Flavia.There's something else implied in the question "What does Caterina do in the evening?"—an assumption that her evenings must somehow be different from her peers'. So I have to ask: Why, despite the fact that Caterina knows so many young people, why does she almost never go out in the evening? When teenagers throw spectacular eighteenth-birthday parties, meticulously planned down to every detail, why doesn't it occur to anyone to invite these particular friends?
Maybe I should turn the question around. Why don't the teenagers themselves—who know about these families, who understand the isolation their disabled peers often live in—think to ask them along for the evening?
"Why aren't you going out tonight with...?" "Have you tried calling...?" If it doesn't occur to Caterina's peers to invite her, if they don't think to include young people with disabilities, then something has gone wrong on our end. We adults—families, schools, associations—have failed. We have not truly educated our children toward genuine coexistence and equal relationships. Instead, we've built an "us" and a "them," leaving "them" confined to a world that seems different to our eyes.
It would be a beautiful dream to create a time bank—to gift a few afternoons or Saturday evenings each month to a lonely friend, so you can have fun together. Maybe the real gift ends up being to yourself. Yes, you have to prepare, get to know each other. But it could become what the Little Prince teaches us (that over-quoted, over-used text for educating children about friendship): a slow "taming." As the fox tells the Prince: "If you tame me, we will need each other."
Here's an example. Caterina, who often gets restless sitting and waiting, managed to sit through an entire opera at Rome's Opera Theater, in her own box, with two lifelong friends: Elisabetta and Flavia. They knew how much Caterina loved Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore—arias and melodies we've carried with us since elementary school, the soundtrack of our family trips and vacations. When the opera season calendar came out, they didn't hesitate. They bought her tickets and brought her. Together, we created a little guide to opera etiquette. We reviewed some of the arias.
Caterina was enchanted—three hours of opera, intermissions, encores, final applause, all with her friends. A little gentle "taming," and suddenly you have an evening of pure joy for everyone. "I'm increasingly convinced that each of us is the sum of the friends we've had, the people we've met, and the education we've received" (Mario Calabresi).
Anna, one of Caterina's longtime caregivers, also gives her—and us—weekends of carefree fun. Weekends that are just "for her," where we parents aren't invited or expected. The joy and excitement with which Caterina greets Anna tells you everything about her hunger for autonomy, for connection, and for fun. Exactly like everyone else.
So, back to the original question that started all this: "What does Caterina do in the evening?" Here's what I'd say, thinking of her: Caterina waits. She waits for someone to invite her out, to dance with her, to discover how beautiful and fun it can be to be together.