Along the way

Sometimes young travellers arrive at Fra le Righe on their own.

They decide day by day where to go, where to stay.

Sometimes they are the age of my son, who lives away, and I find myself wanting to spend a little time with them, to listen. To make, myself, the gesture that a mother cannot make from a distance.

My own mother had her way of saying I love you: be careful! I did not understand it then, it felt suffocating, and I never said it to my son.

With this boy, though — I do not know why — it came out on its own: be careful…

He showed me the photographs he had been taking. One in particular, taken on the terrace: a small masterpiece made of almost nothing — light, space, colour. Taking pictures, he told me, was a kind of meditation for him. He promised to send me the others he took along the way.

I hope he does not forget, and that he keeps working at this gift of his. And when life gives him what it owes him, I hope that one day he remembers somebody who saw it.

I will not forget him.