We choose our words carefully
I read with interest the article by Rita Massi ("Come dirlo" no. 141, p. 8) and one can only agree that any term can be offensive or not, depending on the context and the intentions of the person who utters it.
However, I would like to express a small reservation.
During my first year of teaching as an annual appointee, at the liceo scientifico in Caluso (TO), the headmaster, prof. Del Giudice, perhaps concerned by the young age of the small group of new teachers, organized a course on didactic and disciplinary updating; he himself gave the first lesson.
We began with roll call.
If we had any doubts about the pronunciation of a surname (at the time it was only a matter of accents, there were no non-Italians in the class), we were to ask the person concerned for the correct pronunciation and apologize when we got it wrong.
Never accuse someone of being "rude" or worse "stupid" but always "you are behaving like a rude person" or "like a fool" etc.
Also avoid "shy." When speaking with parents, instead of the classic "your son is very shy," it was preferable to say "he is a reserved boy, let him grow...".
Our being a point of reference had to begin precisely with our language.
Years later, reading and listening to Jean Vanier, I found the same invitation not to let one's guard down even in the use of words. "One says person with disability not disabled person, because the person's disability does not define them entirely."
We know that communication is not only verbal — there are glances, intonation, context, silences, habit, gestures, and more, not to mention objectively serious, complex situations.
But if attention to what one says, to the terms one chooses, were a continuous exercise, we would perhaps arrive at a delicacy of spirit, at a "profound" lightness that knows how to express itself without wounding.
Like little birds that perch on a branch without bending it.
Nicla Bettazzi
Journey to Tirana
The evening before, I am all excited, because I found out I am going to Tirana, together with Fabio who came to pick me up all the way to my house, in the Annibaliano neighbourhood. I told him where to find me, I told him near the newsagent in the square. I did not run late, my mother and I wake up at 5:00, I had breakfast and I headed down the ramp to an open space on the street. I see him arrive because I recognize him, he spoke to me and he stayed with me both days. I am a boy who speaks little and knows how to speak at the right moment and to listen; I covered the distance, and by car we reach a car park and then the plane, we go through the baggage and identity card checks, without it I could not leave. But for me it is an important thing, to meet new people, it is an important twinning for the two of us, he already knew them, and he is used to travelling. I get on the Alitalia plane and I prefer to sit near the window, otherwise I would not know what to look at. The journey is short and when we arrive we were invited by Albina who has two daughters in a house. One cooked coloured pasta and puts the sauce on it and after lunch washes the dishes; Fabio is always up to date on everything, he talks to me and tells me this is the street where there is life, there is no terrorism and people walk happily until late in the evening, not like back home where we are tormented by politics that takes money out of our pockets. The real occasion we have to do is the community meeting, I saw new people from the place, and I saw them happy to eat the little pastries and choose the name for the community Casa della Pace; I saw them at Mass, I like hearing singing in a foreign language. Fabio and I the next day walk with Aldo and we visit the exhibition of inlaid hieroglyphics, and we go to the square where there is the national hero Scanderberg, I do not remember the other streets. Then we go to a place where there is a lake and the landscape near the mountain. I get back to Rome by 19:00, we take the plane and make the return journey along our streets.
Giovanni Grossi
Life lessons
I would like to share my feelings about the lovely day last June. Lately I have not been going through a good period from an emotional point of view. I know very well that there are far greater tragedies, but when you sincerely and wholeheartedly invest enormously over seven years in a project you believe in and alongside friends who I no longer know whether I can still call such, and you see it fade away, the disappointment and discouragement are immense. In this frame of mind, unfortunately, I went to see, with my lovely family, a social theatre performance in which Emanuele was acting, a 15-year-old boy with Down syndrome who plays football with Maurizio and Antonio. A wonderful story in which he is one of the protagonists alongside the actress who played the part of his sister, ill with ALS, who wanted to find him a job and settle him before she died, and she succeeds thanks to an actor who, until that moment, had only been concerned with his own career, and who takes them into his home and devotes his life to them. I am not ashamed to confess to you that I wept, for the story, for the identification with the great anxiety about the "after us," and in watching the sweetest Emanuele act brilliantly like a seasoned actor. Then we arrived at the Bertolini home. I was keeping somewhat to myself, still caught up in my ruminations about my recent emotional experiences. Marco approaches me, with his disarming serenity and his sweetest smile and says: "What's wrong, are you sad?" I answer yes, that I have had a few disappointments. And he: "But in the family? Strange because Mara is so lovely!" I answer him: "No, with friends." He puts on his best smile and says to me: "So what? Look around you, look how many friends you have!" I turned around and saw them all, wonderful, serene, each one concerned with making those around them feel good, as Marco did with me. I turned around and hugged him, nearly crushing him. Marco, like all the special people who, thanks to my Maurizio, I have come to know over so many years, through sport, integrated theatre, music therapy, Fede e Luce, has given me yet another lesson in life. Thank you to Marco and to all of you, splendid examples that in life truly only the heart should matter. Finally a special thank you to Cristina and Nanni who evidently do not like being alone: there are already so many of them and every year they fill their lovely garden with this troop of soldiers of love.
Paolo Catapano
Dreaming big
I am Marco and I have been part of Fede e Luce since I was 15. I am now 55. I am recounting these things to a friend (she will take care of typing and sending this letter), while I am at the seaside, on the beach, at a camp organized specifically by Fede e Luce, one of the very few realities in which I truly feel myself, enjoy myself, and where I know I am loved. There was a period of pause in my participation; I was looking for something else but now, for a few years, I have returned to my old community of Santa Silvia. I have a spastic motor disability that prevents me from walking, which is why I use a wheelchair or, for very short stretches, I need someone to lean on. I make myself understood but I do not speak entirely fluently. I have a manual dexterity I cannot complain about... here at the camp I manage to set the table, move chairs, play cards, draw with a little help. In Rome I work at the disability desk of a trade union. For some time, many years ago, I was also on the editorial team of Ombre e Luci, then in an office of the culture department of the Municipality of Rome.
At Fede e Luce I have met very important people who have changed my outlook (one of the dearest whom I truly cannot forget was Francesco Gammarelli). For some years now I have been nurturing a dream… many people, my friend included, tell me it is a utopia.
I cannot dream small: I am grown now, I live with my father who has always been by my side and who recently underwent a serious operation. Inevitably I think about my future, but not only because one day I will miss his help and his affection, but because I still have the desire to build something beautiful for myself and for those who will want to join me.
My motto is "transforming selfishness into altruism," that is, doing what is good for oneself knowing that one is also doing it for others.
So let me explain: I have created an association "Il paese di Filoastra." A difficult name... a grand intention. I would like to succeed in building a village where being disabled like me is not an obstacle to ANYTHING. Where each person is guaranteed the possibility of an affective and working life, independent and socially free. Where the fruit of our work is integrated by the goods we would be able to produce, by the stories we will know how to tell (I dream of a kind of reality show with us as protagonists, capable of opening the world's eyes to disability); where we can build and transmit (perhaps also through a web radio) a culture finally open to the person with disability. Where we can have attentive people, employees and guest residents of the village, who follow us where our own abilities do not reach. Where we might also have our own internal exchange currency for our emporium in which people who find no possibility of employment elsewhere could work, not even as shelf-stackers in a supermarket.
Where no car would be necessary to reach friends for an evening together, where not even the rain could stop us because I would like every house in the village to be connected to the others through passageways, even underground ones.
I read the doubt in my friend's eyes: she does not know whether to take me entirely seriously but she knows I am not pretending because I have explained to her that I would like to be able to live daily what I live, for one Sunday a month or for a week in summer, with Fede e Luce. And that when it ends it makes me want to cry. Because I see and feel on my own skin the needs of those around me and how they are mirrored in my own.
I am tired of living in an apartment block for 50 years where no one is really interested in me. Always having to look for someone who can accompany me where I need to go, even to the doctor. For this reason too, one of the first objectives I set myself with the association was the purchase of a minibus to facilitate the travel of people with my difficulties. But it is not easy to convince people, to find the funds: the project I dream of is very ambitious, I realize that. My friend asks me if I have ever thought of starting as other community realities we have seen come into being have done: a small group of people, perhaps at least two others with a disability like mine, in a well-equipped and well-divided apartment or villa, with modern aids, with shared support staff. She says it could be a way of understanding whether it is the opportunity to realize the dream of other people, with a possibility of comparison that is more realistic at the outset (even if by no means straightforward). I am not sure it convinces me… I cannot help dreaming big… in your opinion, will I find someone willing to share my dream?
Marco Colangione