About the fact

...that I say of myself that I'll always be a rider on the storm... Well it means a lot to me. First because I have a strong opinion of myself, and this helped me through far too many storms. I always believed, and still strongly believe, that I can really make it out in the blue skies again. I believe that even if something hits me harder than I could possibly imagine, I somehow make it go away by being myself all the way through it, so basically it means I never stop believing I can fight and win.

The other day I told my new friend and colleague that I come from a family of farmers. He looked at me amazed and said he would have never guessed. Maybe because he does not know that a farmer's daughter could speak of politics and computers and the environmental issues we face and our children will face... And that reminded me of my father's tale of when he was a young boy. He emigrated to Ireland when he was nine years old. He was living with his older brother and they used to be chippers. He spent days peeling potatoes in the underground level of a chip shop as a child.


One day he was with a friend, an Irish boy his same age. The Irish boy asked him what did he do back in Italy, and my father, being himself, said he used to be a shepherd. The boy never believed the story, he always thought my father made it up.

Well, my dear papa', I am what you made of me, with your being yourself all your life and still now, at almost sixty years of age, you never failed to be you, you never failed to show me what coherence is. While mamma showed me strength, and the tools to be productive in any given situation, and much more things, many of them of a practical nature; she thought me all the things I may need to physically survive.

You, on the other hand, showed and thought me every day of my life so far how to survive psychologically, how not to let my thinking go with the current. You have been the one who thought me that working for your family is what matters the most. And that's exactly what I do myself.

You thought me that whatever someone may look like, deep inside we are all the same. I have friends from everywhere in the world, I measure myself everyday with many nationalities, clothing styles, hair dos...

I can say in all fairness that you thought me real democracy, you made me a woman of my time, you made me a citizen of the world. And I lived most of my life in a 600-inhabitants tiny village at the borders of the Appennini mountains in Italy. You made me what I am, you thought me how to adapt to change and still never forget where I come from. And it's amazing, I look at myself and say wow. You really did a good job.

I question myself all the time, this, too, you thought me. You are never too confident, sometimes I remember you shy, because of your education level, in front of people with higher education than yours. But I am definitely a confident person. And you made me this way.

Papa', I am almost thirty, have a child, just bought a house, have some little savings, live 2000 kilometres away from my birthplace, I have met so many people all different from one another, and still am deep inside what I was 10 years ago. I am a restless woman in search of the truth that lies within us.

I may have found some within myself tonight. And I love you for it.