Last summer, Rita called me on my cell phone. Pablo's mother. I hadn't heard from her in a long time, and I was surprised—especially that she'd called my mobile. She had something important to tell me: I was invited to Pablo's 40th birthday party.
I couldn't believe he'd already turned 40. If not for his hair—nearly all white now, just like his father's—you couldn't pin down his age. Pablo has the gift of joking and humming like a child one moment, then asking you serious, searching questions the next: what do you think happiness is? It's unsettling for those of us who are heavier, more guarded, who feel awkward reasoning through such things with people we've just met.
The truth is, people like Pablo—physically bound to a wheelchair—have a way of moving a circle of friends, near and far, across time and distance. When his mother Rita sent out the call, they answered. Thirty years later, and they still came.
Rita and Gerardo were amazed at how everyone responded so quickly after the event, beautifully organized by the group home where Pablo lives.
It was a magical gathering of people who, scattered by life's turns, hadn't seen each other in years. A chance to laugh with friends they'd known at those legendary early Fede e Luce camps at Alfedena—to play the same songs together, with the same guitarists from 25 years before, only with a few more gray hairs now.
Pablo's family welcomed everyone as if time had stopped. As if those nights of conversation—moments that shaped them, Rita later told me—had been last month. Just as Pablo does: if he hasn't seen you in five minutes, he greets you like he's never laid eyes on you. If he hasn't seen you in 30 years, he talks to you as if you've never been away.
This year brought other similar gatherings. Our young people—we still call them that at Fede e Luce, no matter how old they get—showed once again their gift for drawing others close, for spreading friendship, for showing that trust and understanding still matter in our world.
I can only speak to what I've witnessed myself, but I'm certain that everyone could point to an example if they stopped to think.
Take an old friend of Paola's, who organized a surprise party for her 50th birthday at a nice restaurant. Recent friends and longtime friends, all at the same table. Couples who've grown and married within Fede e Luce, now with babies only months old. Paola's warmth—sometimes almost suffocating in how she shows affection (dozens of messages left on people's answering machines prove it)—creates deep relationships that time and distance cannot touch.
Mimmo turned 50 this year too. He likes to call himself the "founder" of the Carro, the group home that also hosts Pablo. He lives every milestone with real engagement, seizing any reason to celebrate it.
Maurizio is the youngest in this small circle, just 18. Everyone calls him Maurizietto. He celebrated several times: once at the residential institute where he lives, then with friends from last summer's camp, and again at an evening party at a friend's house, where he sipped sparkling wine for the first time. When he can, he spends all his time in the arms of whoever's nearby, who whispers words and songs in his ear the way he loves. He has the time of his life, smiling and blowing kisses. I look at the photos from that night and I see what these moments really are: chances for us all to find each other again, to remember those connections that made a day trip or a summer vacation in some house in the middle of nowhere unforgettable. These moments let us taste again what it means to be together—made possible by their presence. They are our teachers. They have changed how we live.
Friends return from everywhere, drawn like iron to a magnet, toward the right pole—an attraction that cannot be resisted.
Laura Nardini, 2009
