Suspended days, new thoughts, uncertainties, strength to inspire new decisions, the wait, the stories of those who loved us two generations ago and, with the recounting of their own arduous, distant experiences, restore to us, today, the certainty of a newfound courage.
My grandfather, a great “chronicler,” immersed me in stories, lived experiences that influence our lives even if, as children and adolescents, we weren’t aware of them, yet they have nonetheless shaped our beliefs and behaviors, and can still help us understand and express who we are.

What surprised me today when I found my grandfather’s thick canvas backpack, a family possession for about 90 years, which forcefully tells me its story, a story that transcends time and that, decades later, still nourishes life.
1940-45, war, famine, disappearing food products, Venice, my family’s city, without crops except on the lagoon islands, and subject to controlled restrictions by the food police. The “black market” was illegal. No oil, flour, bread, milk, sugar, meat, butter, soap, or coffee (made from roasted barley).
But to feed the family, for love, the backpack, useful on picnics and excursions in peacetime, became a key element on those early Sunday mornings when it carried my grandfather on his shoulders on the train to…the Dolomites? No, to Montebelluna.

Her outfit was completed with socks and boots, plus four-packs, and…an ice axe. She would go knocking on the door of farms to buy a few pieces of butter, a salami, a chicken, flour, and eggs for the pasta and bread that my grandmother would then bake, giving the family forgotten and, for that time, even “dangerous” aromas.

That backpack is here now, still bearing witness to a light of hope even in the ignored heroism of everyday life.

(lockdown April 2020)