Luciano is my firstborn and he is my life. Even now, it is difficult for me to speak about him—eleven years after we were told that our baby would be disabled, the result of a brief oxygen shortage at birth that left him with dystonic tetraparesis. Why?
We had no idea what it was, why this beautiful newborn with those enormous blue eyes had received such a diagnosis.
It is not easy to accept the unexpected, to feel unprepared for something you do not understand. And the nights—the silent weeping that goes on and on.
My wife Patrizia was strong from the start, and her strong family never left us alone for a single day. But I did not have that same strength. And my role as a working father took up most of each day.
Through rehabilitation programs that made Patrizia and her sister more and more skilled, those first years of our extended family unfolded.
Then Fede e Luce came into our lives. Though I did not join the movement right away, I began to grow through Patrizia, who threw herself into it at once. I watched the joy that lit up Luciano's face at every gathering.
That journey, and meeting so many extraordinary people, gave us the courage to make a decision I had long refused: to try for another child.
Luna was born—the second gift God gave us. She helps all of us find joy in the small and large things of life every day. And she brings to everyone around her the natural grace of accepting us exactly as we are.
Through Luciano, who knows nothing of our so-called "normalcy," I have learned that despite the pitying looks of others, each of us is equal, if we love one another as God loves us—just as we are.
Christmas, 2014