Little is missing. END-OF-SCHOOL REFLECTIONS OF A (SOMEWHAT MELANCHOLY) DAD

Few days.

June is “The Saturday of the Village”.

The wait, the preparations.

The last questions, the ballots, the night before the exams, the first appointment outside the school, a walk in the moonlight, the skin reddened by the first tan and then it will be time to …

… And then it will be time of sun, sea, interrail, of the trip to England, of the backpack on the shoulders, of the concert under the storm, of the World Cup to mark the best of youth.

And then … if I had foreseen all this, if I had known how to play the guitar, I would have closed the blond braids like a sky in a room and that thin T-shirt of hers would have chased her from Milan to Bangkok …

And then … those summer evenings will be wonderful memories to tell your children when we find ourselves describing in the smallest detail that night, the bonfire, that party on the beach where the father met his mother …

Tonight Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table, the table is covered with a multicolored tablecloth made of leaflets and brochures collected in front of the school.

Summer camps for children are being chosen tonight.

The summer center is organized by the Municipality, the Cooperative, the Parish, the Sports Association, the Educational Farm, the gym, the swimming pool, children can explore, sing, dance, swim, play, experiment, travel, meet, row, to cook …

Suddenly I remember a very boring summer when I got on my bicycle and together with Sergio we went on an adventure, to discover that little road that led into the fields at the end of the neighborhood …

Great ideas are born from boredom …

Idea: next summer I will read War and Peace from the first to the last page …

Every summer I start … and then … and then I get an idea!