For months now, I have carried a particular concern for parents. For the parents in Fede e Luce, but also for all parents who suddenly realize their child will not grow up like other children.
This thought took shape especially when I listened to a mother say through tears: "Sometimes I watch her sitting there and I ache. I wonder what she's thinking. And it hurts."
The other evening, returning from a trip to Puglia around eleven o'clock at night, I found myself on a highway swallowed by darkness. The moon was entirely empty. Then, suddenly, a stretch of fresh asphalt laid over the old surface. I lost my bearings. The asphalt was as dark as the night itself. Yet the lane seemed wider somehow. The lines were gone. Was it actually wider? But I had lost my way. Then, thank God, the old familiar asphalt again—worn smooth, already traveled, already lived—and darker only because of that. And there they were: those white dashes, those wonderful white dashes marking the way.
As I drove on through the remaining stretches of highway, I kept thinking about the sudden darkness that engulfs parents facing something so wholly new. Their bewilderment. And I thought about the importance of those small, seemingly insignificant white dashes painted on the road. I realized that sometimes all it takes is one white line to move forward with peace. Just one line.
Enza Gucciardo, 2002