After the initial shock—the spastic episode, the breathing difficulties—I found myself almost wishing the doctors would remove all those tubes and let her go. Then I understood: her growth would depend entirely on us, on my wife and me. From that point on, we've worked to give her as much independence as we can. We identify what she's able to do alone and where she needs our help, our intervention. We get there with a lot of patience, a lot of persistence, and yes—sometimes with a firm hand. My work keeps me on shifts, but when I'm home I'm happy to be with Arianna: helping her with homework (I read the questions aloud since she can't write, and she's learning to use a computer), taking her to swimming, to therapy.
Thankfully we're not alone. Arianna is friends with all her classmates and gets along well with others. She's very close to her older sister Valentina, who's twenty-three, and then there's Fede e Luce. That said, we do have our difficult moments with her—who doesn't with their own children? Sometimes I can't figure out what she wants, what we can't understand. But after a while, thanks to my wife, to Valentina, and to patience found again, I get through it. In everything we do for her education, love is essential—but it's not the only thing. The experts we've worked with (AIAS, school psychologists, and others) have given us help, but only in short bursts. Too little. It all ends up falling on us parents. I consider myself self-taught.
Conversation conducted by Sergio De Rino with Rosario Giordano, father of Arianna, age 13
Ombre e Luci no. 92, 2005
===CORPO===