of the dry, worn-out balcony woodâ¦
âCome inside, itâs time to go to sleep.â
âAll right, five more minutes, letâs watch the moon and the
stars together.â
âCome sit on my kneesâ
and we tightly hug, my cheek onto her soft cheek.
Mamma Barbara is a sweet and caring mother, her cheeks are as soft as grandmaâs. She really loves children and has a special touch with them, she impersonates motherly love, it fits her to a t. When Iâm in her arms I feel enveloped in a blanket in which I find all I need. A hug often works better than most words or medicines, it can shake you and give you a sense of inner calm, itâs all a matter of your state of mind, of what your soul needs.
I live with my family in a small mountain farm at the feet of the Sciliar. We have various animals, cows, sheep, two horses, rabbits, chickens giving us what we need to live, and theyâre looked after mainly by our father, Karl. Here in Castelrotto, life flows regularly, in full symbiosis with nature dictating its rhythm to the days. In the morning the sun rises caressing the tops of the Sciliar and hiding behind them, finally revealing itself in all its glory above the whole valley. In the evening, sunsets last for quite a lot, until the sun goes to sleep behind the distant mountain chains standing out in the skies of Bolzano and Merano.
I also have a brother, Oswald, who is seven, and a sister, Waltraud, who is ten, sheâs the eldest. When my brother Oswald and my sister Waltraud come back from school and finish their homework we often play together, heâs like my guardian brother, Waltraud looks after me like a second mum, sheâs of great help to mamma Barbara with the housework, just like Oswald is to papa Karl with the cattle in the stable.
2 TN: Italian name of the Schlern.
To be fair I too lend them a hand, obviously itâs nothing more than a game for me, I ask a lot of questions, Iâm very curious and fascinated by this rural world. Some days ago, while helping Oswald throwing hay from the barn to the stable below through the square hole which opens directly next to the trough, I fell into it, finding myself close to the cows munching their hay and looking bewildered at me.
In the summer months, like now in August, we spend entire days in the fields gathering hay. I mostly have fun, running and jumping across the rows of hay like a prancing colt. I often play with small frogs, sometimes I even manage to catch them and carry them in our home garden, but they always find a way to escape. I really like going with Karl on the motorized lawnmower, imitating the noise and the gestures and enjoying the smell of petrol which is an orange mixture looking just like orange juice syrup. Mamma Barbara soon runs out of patience at my imitations:
âHow much more are you going to last with that ânyu nyu,
nyu nyuâ? Stop it please.â
And Iâm sad Iâve annoyed her, so I keep doing it quietly or I simply mime it.
Our small house is simple, somewhat old but itâs just like a fairy tale house, Hänsel and Gretel, that kind of stuff.
With a balcony opening onto the perfumed fields below, the house is placed close to a tiny church and a small crossroads of tight streets, which could be called the townâs centre or square.
For us children, itâs the courtyard where we meet and play with the gang, since almost all of the inhabited houses are there. Some of our neighbours even have seven or eight children, we must be about thirty kids in total.
The barn and the stable are five hundred yards from there, and nearby we also have a small vegetable garden with beautiful flowers and a lot of sunflowers cared for by mamma Barbara, I obviously give her a hand, well, at least kind of. Thereâs also a creek which is a hoot to splash around in, every time I pass it by I want to drink all that fresh water and dive headlong from the small wooden bridge.
We can even hear its sound when the windows are open, and itâs a pleasing presence for the ears and the nose when I deeply breathe that fresh air at morning and at sundown.
And watching the thin mist lifting from the valley at the feet of the Sciliar when the sun is rising, like a theatre curtain at the beginning of a play.
A place like this offers an infinity of spaces for playing, arousing and developing your imagination and tickling creativity.
Like our belfry, which we consider some sort of headquarters: it has long been in disuse, but that isnât a problem for us. We can climb to the top and enjoy the view on our territory from there or we can hide in it when we need to.
We are quite poor, but we get by, producing milk and selling a couple of animals every now and then. But money is never enough to provide for everyone, so mamma Barbara supplements our income by fostering children of all ages at home for periods between a couple of weeks and some months, often during summer.
Children in need of temporary accommodation or of a summer stay, many of them with problems at home, in their family, or with no family at all. Here they all can find shelter and especially love, which is what they need the most, waiting for their own situations to get better or to end up who knows where.
One could also imagine it as a parking lot, or a warehouse where lost parcels wait for a destination.
I remember a blond girl, Eva, who last year stayed with us for some time, she was so sweet, she had a problem with her hands. Her maternal grandmother had drinking issues, and once, sitting drunk in front of the stove, she had tried to warm Evaâs hands by putting them on the piping-hot plate, burning her palms.
So last year they took her here in the mountains to recover and escape from that situation.
Poor thing, she was my playmate at that time, we used to go play in the square, I had my favourite car, a pale-yellow beetle, and she had her dolls.
One morning we were sitting on the ground playing in the courtyard, we looked at each other and at a certain point our faces got nearer and nearer and we gave each other a kiss, innocent but full of affection, I remember it so well, I mustâve fallen in love.
The day after I realized Iâd left my beetle on the courtyard floor: a car had run over it and squashed it, turning it into a convertible.
Some days later the girl had to leave, a woman and a man had come to take her away, I got very sad, I remember I thought âIâve just got engaged, and sheâs already gone.â
I hoped sheâd come back one day, every day Iâd go back and play with my beetle in that same spot, even if it was beaten-up it reminded me of the time we spent together.
Unfortunately, Iâve neither seen her nor heard from her since, I hope sheâs all right now. Itâd be nice to see her again one day, probably far away from here. You never know, so I kept hoping.
When one of our âsiblings in adventureâ must leave to go back to their original family or somewhere else, itâs usually a sad moment for us. The longer they stay, the more we bond, and especially for
