Primavera 2020/Spring 2020

Spring 2020

Strange period that of spring 2020. We were in the middle of our lives when we had to put it on stand-by for a monster as invisible as it is lethal. We still had to recover from the party the night before when we were forced to stay indoors alone, with a thousand questions in our minds and the terror that grew in us. We waited anxiously for 18 PM for the daily war report, the count of lives torn too early, until we began to lose count. It looked like a war, a war against an invisible enemy fought by our best soldiers, the doctors, who took to the field every day for the good of our country. Every day we heard ambulances go by and wondered if they were carrying some of our acquaintances. We wondered if we would ever see our elderly grandparents again, because this monster also took away the possibility of being next to loved ones. But nothing could take away our humanity and Italy began to react: hanging flags on our balconies, applauses of encouragement to our soldiers at the front, the Italian anthem sung joyfully and the goodnight shouted to the neighbors of the block of flat in front of us, who until these days we had never seen before. We learned to fear more for others than for ourselves, to fear for the lives of our grandparents. We learned to make sacrifices for the good of all, to stay away each other to save ourselves. We truly understood the value of a kiss, a hug, a handshake: if only we could have known that that cursed February 21st would be the last day we could do it, we would have hugged other tighter. We even understood the value of school: a right that we had been denied, because nothing could ever replace a lesson in class with our classmates and our teachers. We began to miss our friends who started to see each other on video calls, and the adults who until then had always denigrated us young people and technology began to ask us for help. We went back to the traditions and gradually we got used to the smell of homemade bread and pie. They could have taken everything away from us, but nothing would have prevented us from eating pizza on Saturday night! We went back to rediscovering board games in the family, to the pleasure of a good book, to the beauty of writing: many of us decided to keep a daily quarantine diary. But while we were locked in the house waiting for a nightmare to end, nature continued to run its course. The flowers continued to bloom and the swallows returned to repopulate our skies. Nature recovered its spaces: the dolphins approached the ports, the fawns invaded the city, the water of Venice became crystal clear and its canals became populated with swans and the air was clean again. Only then did we realize how much more beautiful the world was without us, that nature was capable of incredible wonders and we cried looking at the images of our home, our Earth, returning to our primordial balance. The empty cities and their monuments were there waiting for us: soon they would fill up again with different people. The spring of 2020 changed our minds because we acquired the awareness that everything could be turned upside down and we learned to love each other stronger and to love life. When it was all over and we had the certainty of no danger, we went out into the square to dance and sing all with tears in our eyes, jumping to the rhythm of music like a single heart that beats. We went back to laughing together without screens between us and we shone so much that the whole universe was moved.