The special education teacher gave herself entirely to the children with cerebral palsy in her care, drawing on all her skill and devotion. She invented every sort of trick to awaken what she called the "imprisoned intelligences" of her students. All of them made progress except Maria. Ten years old, abandoned to her wheelchair, her gaze fixed and empty, her small body limp. It was enough to break your heart—and some days the discouragement nearly overpowered even this stubborn teacher.
One morning, suddenly, Maria began to cry out, her eyes bright with excitement, fixed on the windowsill where a few terracotta pots sat waiting for spring. The children had planted bulbs there weeks before and forgotten them. Everyone turned toward Maria's voice: a green shoot had broken through the soil in one of the pots.
There was no doubt who was happiest—the teacher. Maria had finally shown that she was present, that she was taking part in the world. There was reason to keep working with her.
"Why are you lying there? Get up now, come on!"
Piero doesn't move. He stares, utterly entranced, his small finger raised, tracking something invisible to his mother's eye. She is troubled by this strange behavior. She has enough to worry about already.
She tries again: "Up now, that's enough lying on the floor!" But Piero seems not to hear. He lies motionless, completely absorbed in something she cannot name. His enchantment is total. His mother bends down, puts on her glasses in exasperation, and looks. The red tiles, freshly scrubbed, show nothing. She brings her face close to his and finally sees it: a tiny red spider, no bigger than a pinhead, scurrying back and forth across the floor—and to Pierino, it is the whole world.
Marta rides across the courtyard on her sleek black Doberman like a little princess reviewing her subjects. Four children, roughly her age, watch in admiration: one with his finger in his mouth, another with arms raised high, a third with his mouth wide open, and the tallest, who shouts: "My turn now!"
Marta turns toward him with a hint of superiority in her look, as if to say:
"Don't you know Black won't let anyone ride him but me!"
Black was trained as Marta's "life companion"—she walks with great difficulty—and he would never accept any child on his back except his Marta.
Francesca's parents brought her to the sea with her brothers. The doctors hope the salt air will strengthen the girl, fragile and unable to walk or speak.
Her mother often wonders: "When will Francesca show us what she wants? When will she show us her own will?"
One morning they left her sitting on a beach chair while they moved off a little with the other two children. She never moves on her own anyway.
A few minutes later her mother glances back at the chair and finds it empty. She retraces her steps and sees her daughter crawling quickly toward the water. Just half a meter away now from plunging into the sea that calls to her. She seems to be saying: "Didn't you know the ocean is where I belong?"
Four small stories to remind us all of the magic and wonder that nature holds for anyone—child or adult—who knows how to behold it: a sign and a power of its Creator.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2009