Today, October 7, we're celebrating the return of our workshop activities with a trip outside Rome. We're going to visit a friend who lives in Bracciano. A boat ride around the lake, pizza in the open air, a donkey ride—or, given our considerable weight, let's say a walk *with* the donkeys rather than on them! I arrived early and claimed a comfortable seat by the window. Now they come trickling in, some alone, others in small groups. I watch them board the bus one by one: backpack, sun hat, camera. Our boys, so grown-up now.
For us friends, certainly, they'll always be "the boys." But in truth, many of them look almost elderly to a fresh eye. Their hair is beginning to gray, and lines are deepening their faces. Some struggle to climb the high bus steps. I've been told that premature aging marks the fate of these young people. But really—how old are they now, and how many years have we known each other? Incredible: for some of them, it's been twenty, twenty-five years already! So what am I surprised about?
And we, the "friends"? I look at them now—I look at myself—with a more critical eye. Friends twice over, because we're friends to the boys and to each other. After so many years together, we've become true friends. We've changed too. Changed quite a lot, if you look closely. Our hair—if not for the hairdresser's art—wouldn't be what it once was. Our faces aren't what they used to be. More than that: in our movements, we're less quick, slower in our walking. Nearly all of us need glasses now, need to write everything down so we don't forget, need to protect ourselves from drafts. We need the workshop heating to work on cold afternoons. We too struggle a bit climbing onto the bus, and we ask careful questions about the route. Won't there be too many hills? Too much sun? Too many things to see?
And then, as improvised actors in our workshop plays, we labor to learn our small parts by heart. So many mistakes, so much laughter! And besides—let's be honest—we have our own weaknesses now, our moments of irritability, our refusal to tackle something more complicated or simply more unpleasant. And our urge to chat, especially about our ailments, is dangerously on the rise.
I keep watching the friends and the boys, thinking as the bus carries us away. Bice is pointing out the itinerary, the first jokes are being traded, the first songs attempted.
I keep thinking: "Us too—it means us too, like them. Like Augusto, like Stefania, like all our workshop friends who, unlike us, have always had their weaknesses, their fragilities, their incapacities—at ten, at twenty, at forty. It's as if the years we've spent together have made us a bit more alike, as if we were now supposed to share some of their difficulties, to experience the same struggle in doing things that seemed so simple to us but have always been hard for them. So we, the teachers who were meant to guide and instruct, after all these years are simply a bit more like them. A bit less sure of ourselves and our abilities. A bit more incapable.
Well, quite a result! I finish my reflection with a touch of sadness. But deep in my heart, or in my mind, another voice echoes—the one who always knows how to reassure us: "Unless you return as these little ones…"
Pennablù, 2008