The ninety voice – Love and distance.
Writing art-therapy
Old women interviewed
Copyright Federico Berti 2015
CHILDREN STAND IN NEED OF BOTH PARENTS
Today we have reached a level that do more fury those who are divided rather than united. During the Second World War my husband was away, East Africa, Albania, Germany, Alpine Front, France, he made all the wars, away from home. We were engaged, we wrote long letters, when he returned he had so many papers, then he said: You know what? We’ll set them all on fire: did not want other people would have read our love letters. Four or five letters a week, it is almost every day, we had confidence in each other, sure that we would be reunited. Oh God, for reasons of war or that one owes to work away I can understansd but if it becomes a choice then for me it goes bad: family doesn’t live together, children stand in need of both, no good if one in Africa and the other in Australia! You see the Actors, they stay away from home but for a while, then return. They earn much money, a little ‘they take children until they go to school, but then divorced as well, they have three or four weddings on their shoulders: do not envy them at all. To have three and more children with three and more different women, being not married. Today we live in a different world, can’t compare the past: when I was young, nine years you were already girlie! I’ve heard stories of emigrants. If you want to stay away by choice rather than by necessity, it means that you have already broken all over each other, you do not really think love but only care to your personal freedom and fun. Do not create anything good for society. Of course if they do not feel mature to create a family environment, they better stand on their own but then everything goes back and hair knots come to roost.
When you’re old, loneliness is bad. I’ve lost my husband thirty years and I missed him very much, thanks to my little child I found the strength inside me to overcome it, and I made up. Then I lost him too and I felt almost abandoned, even having many friends as I have, but I got no real family. So, too. It’s true that the hystorical and economic international situation is tough, insecurity, uncertainty, but in our time it was worse than today, we just had nothing! Another spirit of sacrifice, that is missing now, I mean love overcomes everything. Let’s unite, try to love your dears, get along and help each other in life. My father had emigrated, came back to home twice a year, Christmas and Easter, I had an awe because it was very authoritarian, I could not wait he left again; he worked in Olten as a bricklayer, Central Switzerland, he was good at drawing so they promoted him as a master builder. When he turned to Italy I was ill, so he made a small business and brought forward, no longer keeping away. After coming out in the evening, for an hour with friends at club, when he came back he always took an ice cream to Mom. Distant love can last if the sentiment is true, but not if it is an adventure. My boyfriend was called to war, then after some years he came back to my house but I saw him changed, as a foreigner, maybe for that bad he passed through, we must understand it. It was not the same as when he left. Love puts everything right, my daughter’s husband worked in the Philippines and she has followed with two daughters, we went twice we think they made their first communion there, my daughter took the clothes here in Italy because away people dress them according to different uses. I did not understand the Language. Back in Europe are now in Germany four years. It’s tough because now I really feel alone, but life must go on and you have to deal with difficulties.