I will never forget the day Gianni burst into the workshop and announced—through his limited speech and expressive gestures—that he had fallen in love and become engaged to a girl from his class: Rosa. It was less an announcement than a proclamation, accompanied by exuberant displays of joy: kisses and embraces for everyone present, urgent demands for congratulations and compliments that somehow never seemed adequate to the moment's importance. Certainly, it was an unusual and excessive way of sharing news by the standards of "normal" people, but it made me think afterward. A first love is memorable for any human being—at fifteen, thirty, or fifty. It's an experience that shakes your life awake, floods you with emotion, transforms you. So if we weren't bound by so many conventions, so many fears, why shouldn't we speak of it? Why shouldn't we share it with people who know us, who care for us, who will understand and celebrate with us? That's what Gianni thought that afternoon, and he acted on it. And perhaps we weren't ready to understand.
But it didn't end there. In his enthusiasm, Gianni wanted to know how we had experienced that same thing—where, how, when. What had we said to the person we loved? And the first kiss? So in a kind of collective ritual, amid laughter and a little embarrassment, we all remembered and somehow told the story of those moments we had, perhaps until then, kept secret for lack of the right person or the right time to share them with.
In the end, Gianni wrote Rosa a letter on a large sheet of paper filled with hearts and flowers. He declared once more his love for her and his happiness, and we all signed it—some of us adding a small drawing too. I hope Rosa kept that letter, because it was truly beautiful. Every person in love, I think, ought to be happy to receive something like that.
Pennablù, 2009