Cwho knows how many mistakes I made. With the best intentions, trying to teach respect, prepare for sharing, prevent misunderstandings. Convinced that the most tortuous path would be that of her daughterwho instead, after the years of slammed doors, long faces and embraced reconciliations, then set off on her own path with her head down, spirited and determined.
And perhaps she was right when she accused me of using two different weights between her and her brothers, more demanding with her when I exhausted her with the bed to make and good manners. Innate, unconscious prejudice, she maintained. Maybe, but in the meantime tidy up, I replied.
However, I think I have always insisted to everyone on the code of honor of their super heroeswho defend the weak, leave no one behind and never judge, much less by appearances. I tried to educate them about toleranceto the use of reason and the rejection of violence and aggression, but also to nail them to their individual responsibilities, without fear of appearing ancien régime.
Danda Santini, director of iO Donna (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Perhaps there, in the midst of my attempt to make them good citizens, attentive to the good and the common good, I didn’t realize that the ring with the most pitfalls and least certainties would surprisingly be the male one. That while everything was changing around them they didn’t seem to feel the need to leave their comfort zone. And now I ask myself: will they be ready to be men alongside women of the new millennium?
Men if they want to be, of course, and for as long as they feel they are, because this is also the theme today. Are they ready to understand, do they want to listen, share, care?
Will they be able to team up when their models are still often tailored to the individual and not yet to the community? They will be curious about women, not like exotic islands to conquerbut as allies for growth projects, with a different perspective to bring as an asset?
Illustration by Cinzia Zenocchini
They will explore alternative routes, taking side paths, new ones, even uphill oneswith frequent stops, they who love speed, changing perspective, like we did when we left the domestic role to face the world, taking risks, taking on the hard work, adding newness to newness, and it was always the first time?
You are ready, my children, to be collaborative colleagues, attentive companions to needs and desires, fathers who know how to take the initiative, men capable of recognizing emotions, their own and those of others? We have given you the tools for a low-flying exploratory flightslow, of those that allow you to linger on the details and perhaps even change your destination. Could the example of a normally imperfect family, always in progress between impulses and disagreements, have been a good starting point?
As our Serena Dandini writes: Let’s all root for the men of tomorrow, alongside us for a fairer world. But that flight is necessary. And I, after having been afraid for years of what your sister might encounter and suffer, am now also starting to worry about what you might, with a light heart, do or not do.
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