The first miracle is that Dario doesn't bolt from the table the moment he finishes eating, rushing off to watch television. We need to write something for Mariangela, and we have to ask him a few questions about Faith and Light. Is he ready?
He shrugs the way he does when he means yes without showing too much eagerness, trying to hide a bit of fear—six-year-old pride bristling at difficult questions, but not quite sure he can answer them. Ready? Let's go.
What's your first memory of Faith and Light? Mara and I ask, almost in unison.
"Lourdes. The grotto of the Madonna. The party with the blue poncho."
We dig deeper and discover it's not really his first memory, but the first that comes to mind—the strongest feeling. Mara and I try to answer too. She remembers an election of a regional coordinator in Viterbo. Those were her first days in community life, brief but unforgettable. She felt something powerful when she left Dario—not yet three—to sleep alone in his room: he woke up and wandered the hallways until a friend found him. Gradually, Faith and Light was teaching us to feel less like our children belonged wholly to us, and more like they belonged to us in the truest way.
I would have answered Dario's question the same way he did. The coincidence almost bothers me: how is it that we live in our communities every day, at every celebration, in every phone call—and then we remember more vividly a place far away that we visit once a decade? But it's true. And it's true that neither Dario nor I need much effort to summon other memories.
Dario remembers the camps, of course—washing floors with Antonio Menga and Mariella, fetching water, taking out the trash, serving as an altar boy. For the first time, I realize how much Faith and Light has shaped a child lucky enough to have known it his whole life.
I'm basking in this thought when Mara asks him: "What is Faith and Light?" And he says: "A community of sick kids." All our euphemisms gone in an instant. All the suffering of our young people, our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters—condensed into a single adjective that cuts like a personal failure. You want children to come to you? Then take their unvarnished honesty too. I've been thinking for some time now that at community gatherings we applaud, laugh, and joke—sometimes too much. I've wondered how much the young people actually enjoy it, especially some of them—I think of the most severely autistic ones, for whom any break in routine, any raised voice, any strong emotion feels like an assault on their unreachable world. Do they have fun with us, or do they simply accept, in the name of friendship, what happens around them? My son's word brings all of this back. Once again, I owe him my thanks.
- Vito and Mara Giannulo, 2003