"Mom is really angry this time," Viola thinks. "And all I wanted was to be close to her." Yet her mother had warned her.
The thing is, ever since Viola discovered the pleasure of reading, she's become a vacuum cleaner for words. Written words draw her in, opening unknown worlds, stirring up thoughts and dreams—sometimes nightmares too (though the grown-ups always say that both light and shadow are part of life). Among all the books she finds scattered around, Viola is especially captivated by the ones on her mother's nightstand. She's never seen her mother reading during the day, but from how often the stack changes, she's figured out why the dark circles under her eyes. Her mother—who spends her days rushing between work, the house, Viola, and Mimosa—reads at night. Even though her mother has told her repeatedly not to poke around in her things, Viola wants to know what she devours. It's a way of feeling close to her, a way of showing love. Her mother jokes and plays with her, but never talks about what's on her mind. Still, Viola watches. She notices everything.
For the past few months, she's been acutely aware that her mother is deeply worried about her grandmother, who isn't well. Viola finds her grandmother endearing, though she doesn't remember what she did just moments before, confuses people and situations, sometimes does strange things. Viola thinks she's just very forgetful. But she's figured out that her mother sees something much deeper.
So when Viola spotted on her mother's nightstand Laura Baldassini's book, Will You Take Me Home? Caring for a Sick Parent (Claudiana, 2015), and saw that it had been finished, she borrowed it. She read it straight through. It's a sad book, true—but Viola thought it was also full of hope. What stayed with her most were the words written by the doctor who contributed the introduction, Gabriella Bottini.
"Meeting this woman," Bottini writes, "was enormously difficult at first. I myself struggled deeply with having to tell her of the onset of imperfection, of reversed care—her daughters caring for her now, not she for them. It was particularly painful and exhausting to arrive together at the recognition of her difficulties with memory, reading, and orientation. At the beginning there were countless skirmishes, an inability to accept the surprising fluctuations of the illness (one bright day followed by ten dark ones, then a deceptively encouraging shade of clarity returning). (...) I watched her three daughters take turns in despair, in their determined conviction that they could solve every problem, in the defeat of relentless daily reality. And yet I always saw them together, each with different tasks. (...) Recently, during a home visit, I encountered a patient who was surprisingly serene, unburdencd, at peace with herself, I would say. I left feeling grateful—yes, grateful—carrying away just one perfect note among a thousand difficulties: the haunting image of her eyes, that profound blue."
Viola thinks of her grandmother's beautiful eyes. And she wants to tell her mother that she's not alone. Viola is small, but she is there. Just as they've been trying to help the world understand Mimosa's beauty, she's certain they will find the strength to live with serenity through her grandmother's new fragility.
Giulia Galeotti
===END===