My time at Ombre e Luci with Mariangela lasted some twenty years—and it became one of the most formative periods of my adult life.
Everyone knew what Mariangela was: a force of nature, a volcano, a river in flood, a fighter, a catalyst, unstoppable momentum, a counselor and confidante, a teacher. I felt extraordinarily fortunate and honored to work beside her for so long, sheltered under her protective wing.
She taught me everything through the simple act of working at my side. She was forthright, grasping at once the struggles parents face when they must fight for their children—because she had lived through the same battles herself. She loved direct contact with people: countless phone calls with mothers and fathers across Italy, personal meetings in the office or at Fede e Luce gatherings around the world, and endless conversations between the two of us.
I often wondered how Mariangela remembered everyone and everything. She knew the personal stories of all two thousand or so subscribers to Ombre e Luci and held them close, tucking them into her heart until the right moment came to tell them in her editorials, articles, or testimonies. How did she hold all those lives, all those experiences of the families touched by Ombre e Luci or Fede e Luce?
In the office, Mariangela would sit down at a rickety little cabinet and pull out a card file—those famous index cards, alphabetized by surname and postal code. She had jotted down notes from past meetings. But often just a glance at a card was enough. She remembered everything.
"Let's pull the cards, let me look for a moment…. I remember his birthday is this month," she would say. Or: "She told me good things about this facility." "I spoke with this mother about this and that, and we've talked several times." How many times did we try to convince Mariangela to join the modern world, to embrace computers and create a single digital archive so that "you just click a letter and the computer tells you the name, address, everything!"
"It tells me everything? What can a computer tell me? Can it explain what this family is going through? A computer? At best it tells me that someone hasn't paid their bill or doesn't want the magazine anymore. But it doesn't tell me how the family is doing, how the brother is managing now that he's caring for his sister, since their parents are gone."
Only much later did I understand: those simple, homely cards were the treasure of Ombre e Luci, Mariangela's treasure. Thanks to them, she wrote hundreds of articles, editorials, and testimonies. The cards were the heart of the magazine, the history of Ombre e Luci itself—the fruit of all those conversations and exchanges Mariangela had with everyone who crossed her path.
She loved to talk, to chat, to share experiences. These were not cold, clinical, professional consultations—families already had plenty of those. They were warm, familiar conversations, what the English call "small talk": light drawing-room chatter. Yet they were never superficial, despite what the term suggests. In those moments, Mariangela gave her best self. She opened her heart, her arms, all of herself. There was mutual understanding and genuine sharing. We laughed, we cried, we talked things through together.
Small talk, but extralarge.
Huberta Bertolini Pott, 2014