We are given the opportunity to meet many people in a lifetime. And too few people. Too busy with problems, preoccupied with ourselves, extremely careful to maintain appearances, build our CVs, attend events with a crowd, have thousands of likes and be tagged, dress in a certain way and take stunning pictures, check in at 5-star locations, where we meet our friends at the spa, lunch or dinner, run away from work to pick up the kids, pick them up from after school, take them to ballet, German, painting, origami, go to the gym and count our calories every day...

When I was little, and shoes were so hard to find (and hard to "try on", as soon as they were put on by our constantly running feet), there was a great craftsman in our village, Acatrina's grandmother, without whom we couldn't imagine getting out of certain extreme situations. I can easily go back in time and see myself climbing the hill (at speed) to his house, with a bag full of shoes (or my mother's clunky shoes and clogs) that needed some special "treatment", before going to a camp or in view of the start of the school year....

Wednesday. 11.11. Another crazy day in which I can't finish everything I have to do. And yet, I ran out at lunch to hug my girls, when they left school. Thea had tears in her eyes and pride. She didn't understand how I came just to tell them I loved them and to hug them. I went back to the office. I ran out at 4:40 PM to get flowers, then to pick them up from English classes, first one, then the other. I got home, arranged the bouquets and the braids and ran to the Radio Hall. I was...

I remember with great nostalgia the artistic moments staged by my sister and I as children and the perseverance with which we "worked" to make our costumes perfect. First, we would turn to our grandmother's closet full of "treasures", where they rested, meticulously arranged, filled with lavender sachets and scented soaps (sometimes even the repellent mothballs or bouquets of dried wormwood), various fabrics (of very good quality and not only, because it was not easy to acquire fabrics in those days). Of course, if we were caught in the act, the situation was not very comfortable. But since we had...