The world is made...

The world is made of the substance of our senses, and it offers itself to us through the meanings that modulate perceptions.

David Le Breton, The taste of the world. An anthropology of the senses

Me and a mother

What to say to a mother who has recently started to deal with a chronic disease that threatens the life of an adolescent daughter? What to say if she is suspended between a possible terrible verdict and the hope that reappears, but is almost seen as a threat to paradox. If things go well, as it seems, it would be even more unbearable to be disillusioned later. 
Do I defend myself behind the white coat, which incidentally I do not wear, and do I treat her as a clinical case?  Do I frame her in an elegant diagnosis and give her something to relieve the intolerable anxiety that doesn't give her peace? 

But what to say, that has not already been said, and that doesn't sound affected or unnecessarily comforting, or misplaced. 
The words come later, I sense. Now,  I have to live her same anguish, and stay there, present, while the images of my children continue to turn around into my head. 
I have to let the pain bounce between me and her, and then try to face it together: with a presence at your side pain is just a little more bearable. I hope.

Maybe

Perhaps authentic relationship is the other name of charity ...

Frecce tricolori

The airshow of the Frecce Tricolori (the Italian Air Force acrobatic squadron) held on Sunday in Marina di Ragusa, during the Addio all'estate (goodbye to summer) day.

Hope

Hope encourages reason, and gives her the strenght to orientate will.

Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate.

Rosa

Your smile put everybody in a good mood, even if it counted only on a single tooth, and was surrounded by myriads of wrinkles. They were the eyes to give light to a face carved from years of endless mental hospital admissions. You did not talk for more than twenty years, not a word, never.

One morning, the meeting at the rehabilitation centre, you arrived hand in hand with Salvatore. You laughed and watched him. He was a lot younger than you, and besides his mental disorder, he also had a serious heart disease.

He looked at you too, shyly.

We all felt a thrill of tenderness and emotion through the air.

I'm not sure if my memory serves me correctly (many years have passed, and hundreds of faces and names), but I think that from that day, you started again to mutter something vague, sometimes.