CH #6 - HAPPY FATHER'S DAY - BECOMING OUR PARENTS’ PARENTS.

The number of casualties is now close to 3000 in Italy. Same as the victims of 9/11.

Yesterday has been the worst day to date. Lombardy remains the epicentre of Italy, and Brescia, which has 3785 cases, has even more new cases than Bergamo, plus 484 compared to the previous day. 

In the hospital where Francesca works, the virus has contaminated 300 medical staff.

Today, we celebrate Father’s Day in Italy, and since I cannot hug my dad as we’re all locked down in our own house, I wrote him a letter, with the idea of interpreting a thought which is common in my generation. 

Il Giornale di Brescia, Brescia’s newspaper, has published it. 

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Dear dad,

I am lucky enough to have you still in my life, and I live pushing away the idea that destiny will one day separate us.

I’m past my forties, and you’re past your seventies, and apart from telling you to quit smoking (although I get it, the quarantine is maybe not the best time to do that), I’m living with a placidly fatalistic approach. You must have passed on to me your tranquillity that certainly helps when life is testing us. 

But today, I really would like to hug you and wish you a Happy Father’s Day. Instead, we’re separated by a screen. The same one I use these days for distance learning, which is called DAD in Italian, Didattica a Distanza - I hear an echo of irony there. 

We use distance learning every day, as my girls cannot go to school because of the Coronavirus. And I’ll use distance learning to continue teaching my students; from the intimacy of my home, I’ll open a window for them into my daily life, rediscovering the most fatherly and confidential aspects of a teacher-disciple relationship. 

Keeping a distance from each other now is the right thing to do, to not spread the virus, but at the same time, it sends shivers down the spine as I realise I have reached a critical point in my life: a desire to transform, from the son of my father to father of my father. This desire comes from the need to protect you during this storm while I see other sons losing their fathers.

Becoming our parents’ parents. It's the peak of the existence that my generation is going through right now without much of a warning given to us while we anxiously wait to reach another peak: the one on the chart, meaning the worst is behind us, the curve will descend and take us - hopefully quickly - back to normality. Looking at that curve, childhood memories of roller coaster rides surface. And merry-go-rounds. The ones you used to take me to as a child. 

To teach. To learn. Two activities connected always and forever, just like you and me. 

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