There comes a time in life when you find yourself inexorably pushed to be the cheese on the sandwich. The parents are getting older and the children are not yet old enough. Some ask you to give them a hand because the cell phone I don’t know what’s wrong with it does strange things to me, and the others want to be treated as adults but need sustained sponsorship and personal assistant. Because they are old enough for the big party but too young to make formal calls – what problem do young people have today, digital natives, to hold telephone conversations? Great mystery. Because they are old enough to choose what they want to do with their lives, but they need absolute availability when necessary – even if seen closely some problems are not life or death as they swore when they called us. And we, poor piece of sweaty, perimenopausal cheese, are navigating between maternal and filial love, which can do anything, and always with joy, because look, we can still be there. Meanwhile, the end of the school year is coming inexorably. The mirage of the summer holidays is looming, close at hand, where – for a few moments – we will think about the good side of it all: that the parents no longer scold us and we can talk, and that the children do not need to be so on top of it in case they get bored or jump in the pool. And with a bit of luck, the days go by, meeting each other’s needs, while you miss that time when parents were your refuge and children a well of unconditional affection. The circle of life. In a few years, if we do it well enough, they will be the ones taking us to the doctor and upgrading our cell phones. We, in return, will make them some cannelloni.
