In recent months, I have often been amazed. Amazement is always a wonderful feeling for me. It helps me come to terms with my mortality, with the fact that I cannot always know things in advance, and it colors reality with a new light.
In recent months, I have been amazed at how many things I have done, from the most involuntary to those done with real intention.
I discovered that I can, for example, sneeze normally. I can wink, both with my right and left eyes, although it is more difficult with my left eye and I have to work at it a little. I can walk and take long walks and hop on one foot as much as I want (although, as a precaution, I have not gone beyond three hops). I can drink more than two glasses of wine but less than three on an empty stomach without risking losing my coordination between my butt and the chair.
And then I can whistle.
I’m whistling even now (fiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiiifiiifiiiiiii, can you hear it?!).
Whistling is perhaps like a wind that comes from within. And the wind brings things with it and takes others away.
At home, my father often did it, and my grandfather before him.
My grandfather whistled to call us from afar, his children and then his grandchildren, and when we heard it, wherever we were, we knew it was him, that it was our whistle—a pastoral tradition, perhaps, who knows.
My father’s whistling was different, though.
Over time, I thought back on those whistles and realized that there was something about him.
I only realized it as a teenager when he and my mother were separating.
I saw him meditating and thinking. And in all his absorption, he whistled.
I remember that his gaze was distant, very distant, and I knew that I would never be able to reach him.
It was clear that he had discovered that even the air can be a wall behind which to hide.
But despite his efforts to become invisible, I always managed to see him.
(Fiuuuuuufiuuufiuuuufiuuuufiuuuuufiuuuuufiuuuuuuu)
Anyway, during all this time, I was amazed at being able to do everything, even wait.
Sometimes it’s something you say just for the sake of saying it, not to rush, to wait.
Yet, in recent months, I think I’ve come to understand better what it means.
When my father died, for example, I felt a great rush inside me. I wanted to hurry up. I wanted to feel good, smile, travel, and do all those things that I felt I had done before, but not well. It was as if there was a hidden thought in my head that if someone you love is so sick, it’s not right to feel good, it’s not right to smile, it’s not right to travel.
(Fiuuuuuufiuuuuufiuuuuuuufiufiufiufiufiufiufiu)
I remember that the first thing I thought was: if you’re a hero when you save someone, what are you when you don’t save them?
And I struggled with it for a while, I didn’t answer myself, or at least not completely, but I managed to ask myself other questions.
For example, I asked myself: how does a hero save someone who doesn’t want to be saved?
Even then, when my father passed away, I was very surprised, along with many other emotions, some imaginable, others less so.
(Fiuuuufiuufiuuufiufiufiuuufiuu)
One thing I remember about the days that followed was that everyone wanted to help me in their own way, but it seemed to me that few really understood how I felt. For many, my father’s death was cathartic, for others it was like an exercise, a test, like when you do a rough draft before handing in your essay.
And for me? I wondered what grade I would get. (Fiuuuuuuuuuufiuuuuuuufiuuuuuuuufiiuuuuuufiuuufiuuuuuuuufiuuuu).
One thing some people said to me was, “You’ll see, time will pass, even if it never really goes away!”
To me, that “it will never really go away” sounded like a sentence, and I ended up focusing on the annoyance I felt towards those words, which, I must say, was also convenient because it made me feel angry, and being angry, at that moment, made me less afraid of being sad.
(fiufiiiiiuuuuuufiufiufiuuuuuufiufiufiuuuuuu)
The night my father died was in December, and there was a wind that seemed like it would blow everything away. I liked that the weather inside and outside were similar.
I remember the phone call with the doctor from the hospital. She called me to say in a reproachful tone: “If my father were in the hospital in this condition, I wouldn’t stay home sleeping, because it could be my last chance to see him!” She said it for my sake (at least that’s what she claimed), but without any interest, without thinking about who was in the hospital bed a few steps away from her, or who was on the other end of the line.
(Fiuuuuuuufiuuuuuuufiuuuuufiufiuufiuuuuufiufiu)
She said it without knowing how many times, over the last thirteen years, my father had been in and out of hospitals.
She said it without knowing how many sleepless nights we had spent wondering what would happen, she said it without knowing how many arguments with doctors, nurses, and him we had already gone through to get there, my sister and I. How many…
Then I realized that if I had told her 143, or 85, or many, she wouldn’t have cared anyway because the doctor really just wanted to make me feel guilty.
(Fiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiuuufiufiufiufiufiufiufiufiu)
In recent months, in addition to being amazed by the thousand things I have done voluntarily or involuntarily, and truly understanding what it means to wait, I think I have also finally learned how to recycle.
But what does that have to do with anything, you might ask!
It has everything to do with it. First of all, because I have realized that you shouldn’t throw everything away! In fact, some things are worth keeping, and little by little I will find a place for them. No rush, I’ve learned that by now. What’s more, while I had already learned some time ago, for example, that anger is best thrown away with paper, emotional detachment with glass, and envy with plastic, I have recently realized where guilt belongs.
Guilt goes in the organic waste.
Yes, because once you’ve got rid of it, you can transform it and even use it to fertilize things and make them grow more beautiful and stronger than before.
(Fiuufiuufiufiufiiiiiiiiiiiiiufifiufifiu)
In short, in this half-turn of the earth around the sun, in these months of amazement, waiting, questions, whistling, I have thought very hard about what it means to be in the world.
Being in the world is just a verb, an articulated preposition and a noun, and yet it is what everyone usually does involuntarily without realizing it. It just happens.
But then there are times when you notice it, and it happens when you do simple things like giving a kiss, drawing a picture, or reading a poem. You realize that you are alive, that you are in the world.
And it is as beautiful as a breath of wind coming from within!
Ilaria Serpi
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