Cplow Esther,
I just paid my daughter’s last nursery fee: next year she will go to nursery school. She is 3 years old and, for 3 years in fact, I have lived alone with her: her father has never acknowledged her paternity. I meet him in 2021 on Tinder. Rome is big, but love makes you so stupid that you think that, no matter how huge a city is, you have the impression of having always known it. That sense of familiarity that fucks you and unites you. We spend 2 years together. In these two years (I am 38 and he is 45, therefore no longer kids) I will never meet a friend of his or a member of his family. He is very reserved: he says this about himself. And in fact this is also the external impression, mine and that of my friends to whom I will present it instead. One might have thought she had a double life, but when we happened to meet her friends, I was introduced as Eleonora, just her. And his friends greeted me with: “Ah, but it’s you then, we’ve always heard about you!” Bingo, he was talking about me then! So it’s true that it’s confidential. Give me a slap.
Pregnancy and the choice to become a mother
In these two years we have had unprotected intercourse calculated based on my ovulation. I get pregnant and, upon hearing the news, he tells me to consider whether or not to carry on with the pregnancy knowing that he will never assume paternity. I get information about having an abortion. I will then decide to carry the pregnancy to term considering that he would never be there. The hope, however, was fueled by the fact that he came to some visits and that he was there anyway.
A presence that slowly disappears
When the baby is born he is very actively present in the first month and, after a while, however, his presence begins to decrease. I often tell him to leave me, to do it himself because I don’t have the strength. He says no, that he wants to try to be there. Couples therapy helps us understand if we can be parents despite not being a romantic couple.
To no one, no one, no one, neither friends nor relatives, will he ever tell that he had a daughter.
The other woman and the war at a distance
And in this journey, his visits become more spaced out, sporadic. I discover that he has another relationship that he doesn’t tell me anything about: I discover it on social media. I tell him, he tells her. She starts looking at my profile. I’m the same. Let’s put both profiles public. A slow descent into hell begins in which two women hate each other from a distance through stories and posts with digs. This time give me a loud slap if I think back to the fact that two women are fighting a war with a fool in the middle. She knows about the little girl: she is the only one, according to her, who knows about this secret.
The decision to disappear
He fails more and more, the little girl grows up and the therapy forces him to make a decision: he decides to disappear completely, he will no longer be there for the little girl. Over the years I’ve thought of them all: how will I do it? What future will the little girl have? Why was I so blind? Why does that other one do it and I don’t? There were so many tears, I can’t count them anymore. When I think about it, I feel bad. I don’t wish sleepless nights alone with a newborn on my worst enemy.
Today we are here
But today we are, she is over there sleeping, I am writing to you. She’s beautiful and talks a lot. Making it to the end of the month is a feat: who I am single mother and one VAT number.
Anger and the temptation of revenge
In the months of discovering the other, I started reading Greek mythology again: I was so furious that reading about angry, choleric, furious gods calmed me down. I considered puncturing his tires, tearing out his soles, causing trouble. But I’ve never done it. I would say, fortunately.
Why am I writing to you
Why am I writing to you? Maybe not for advice: although, looking at my sentimental CV, perhaps I would have and would have needed a friend like you very much.I’m writing to you because in recent years your newsletter, your column here, your books took the shape of your voice and your Neapolitan accent in my ears. And they accompanied me very often in my mind. I am writing to you because perhaps I would like to read one of your good wishes, some of your good proverbs for Margherita and me. In Neapolitan. Something that tells me that, despite everything, everything will be okay.
AND.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear E,,
«Jamm’ a verié»
Let’s go and see. Let’s see and try to understand what’s wrong.
There is a state of mind that doesn’t exist in Naples. Or rather: they let you pass it. It’s discouragement. Not knowing what to do and therefore remaining immobile. This jamm’ a verié it is the feeling against surrender.
You take your time, you take the necessary path, you take the trouble between your feet. Important: jamm’ a veré is plural even if it’s just you.
Then the solution is found. Solutions that are luck, intelligence, the will to take charge of the wrong things and fix them. There’s no point in being scared if there are ways to do it.
It’s the difference between “something can be done” and “something can always be done.” It’s less abstract, more effective. You just have to get closer. Life asks you to be an electrician more often, Churchill only once in a while.
«Hold on, genius»
In Naples Genio is used in a specific case: «I don’t have a genius».
In Naples there is no genius. You do not say. It doesn’t matter. You only find the word Genius on one occasion.
Genius is an undersized word, they keep it in the pen, it is relegated to a direct object. I don’t have a genius. It means not having the desire.
Genius is the Greek δαίμων, dáimōn. The daemon comes and goes. You can’t keep the little spirit who oversees the quarter hours of greatness.
What the Romans knew is this: he is a hopping tutelary deity. Then under Vesuvius, between sea water and sun, the connotation of “demon helper of ingenuity” was lost and “having genius” just means having the desire to do something. Often want to go to work.
Paradox, the most correct definition came out, much better than the one in Italian.
Genius: someone who gets up and starts doing what he has to do, without too much fuss.
«It goes crooked, it goes straight»
It goes crooked, it comes straight.
Does it start badly? It means that it gets better afterwards. The experience shouldn’t make us better or more bitter, just vaguely optimistic.
It may be the constant exposure to the sun, it may be that Posillipo is there and not here, it may be the habit of living under a volcano and therefore you must also have shelter from fear. It may be character, it may also be that it is a city too desperate to even consider itself depressed, but Naples blends optimism into certain ways of speaking.
She is extremely rare, the ultimate optimist in popular culture. Usually it’s the opposite: sarcasm pushed to put universal injustices in two lines. The Neapolitans have been there through sadness. And they said: we won’t go back again.
It goes crooked, it comes straight. Take something, start it badly, it doesn’t mean it will stay unmatched forever. In fact, it often fixes itself.
There is no choice “do not recognize your children”. By the law “disappear” luckily that’s not a possibility.
The father may also decide that he feels too uncertain to be a father, but he is forced to think about the rest (ask for maintenance and arrears very quickly: it is automatic and the process is not difficult and not long).