"Cuntilu a mamma chi passa u distinu" (Tell Mom before destiny passes). Destiny could no longer pass because Belinda could no longer tell her mother, and as she thought about her memories, a cascade of tears flooded her face and drenched her pillow.
She fell asleep that night, lulled by the sound of the waves and by her weeping. In her dream, she found herself as a child, in her old kitchen, her mother with her back turned, busy washing dishes. In the dream, her mother seemed so close, yet so distant. Suddenly, an old witch, dressed in black, with a menacing air, chased her, and Belinda tried to escape but always found herself going around the kitchen table, unable to fight her. So she screamed, asking her mother for help, but her mother in the dream didn't turn around, as if she neither saw nor heard her.
She woke up the next morning with a bitter taste in her mouth and many more questions in her head than the night before. It was one of the usual Mondays. Belinda had taken Azzurra to daycare and had returned home at nine in the morning. The house was in its usual chaos: the bed to be made and the cups on the kitchen table that still smelled of milk and coffee. By the time she finished cleaning and tidying up the whole house, two hours had already passed. She usually did chores quickly, she didn't like tidying up as her mother Caterina did, but she lingered longer because of her. By now, it had become ingrained in her that clutter and dirt had to be removed every day, and deep down she thanked her for having instilled in her a sense of cleanliness and order.
As she tidied up, her mind returned to the dream from the previous night. She would tell her husband, but he was at work. She needed to know more, to understand something, to interpret that nightmare. She approached the computer as one does when making a new discovery; the desire to know was initially very strong. So Belinda rushed to the PC and searched for news on Google, books to read, videos to watch. Discovering Wicca, she fell in love with it. It was a green world made of women and men who lived a powerful connection with nature and its elements. As she discovered Wicca, it felt like coming home, as if she had opened an invisible door that brought her closer to her ancestors.
Suddenly, something ancestral rose from her soul, like a strong, very strong call. How could she put into words what she felt? That inner voice spoke as if it were a real calling, a vocation, a destiny awakened from generation to generation. She felt that there was something more, that her soul had to follow a different path, not unpaved, made of dreams and magic.
But what was magic? She felt her magic was most powerful in contact with nature, with all the elements that called her: the water with the sea speaking to her, the earth awakening and sprouting with its green, fragrant, and lush plants, the fire crackling and burning, the air caressing like a light breeze sometimes and an impetuous wind at others. She felt everything, everything was within her. Her awakening seemed accidental, but in reality, it wasn't. The birth of Azzurra had marked a dividing line, a bridge between the visible and the invisible that linked four women together.
Azzurra was already ten months old, born from a troubled and difficult delivery. Belinda dreamed of her baby, imagining sketching the features of her face. She dreamed, touching her belly, that she would have blonde hair like Elia's mother and long eyelashes like her dad's and a little upturned nose like hers... that she would be a ballerina when she grew up, even if her wish embodied a perfect cliché.
During pregnancy, the bigger her belly grew, the more doubts and fears increased, like every woman in her first pregnancy. Belinda's only certainty was the name she would give her baby. The name of her grandmother, Caterina. She had had it embroidered on bibs, and all the relatives already knew that she would be named after her grandmother, out of respect, because it was a beautiful name and to keep her memory alive. One night Belinda dreamed her mother told her: "A mamma non vogghiu chi ci metti u me nomi, she must begin her life without burdens and baggage. Start from scratch. Without heavy legacies." So Belinda and her husband decided to change the name of their unborn child.
From the beginning of her pregnancy, she had suffered from high blood pressure, taking pills and always under medical supervision, but unfortunately in the eighth month of pregnancy she was hospitalized for early pre-eclampsia, undergoing an emergency operation. Azzurra was born prematurely by Cesarean section. She entered the world with the voice of a crying kitten. She was born weighing three kilos but immediately became underweight. In the end, Belinda returned home with her little ballerina, and it would be infinite love. This was magic!
She also discovered that wild nature cannot be contained in the living room at home, and that even if one feels safe at home, away from prying eyes, at a certain point the call to the outside and the elements that compose it becomes strong and disruptive, almost a necessary, fierce need. Many are the activities that a Wicca neophyte is called to perform outdoors: collecting aromatic herbs, some edible, others to perfume the environment, still others can be collected and dried, to then make a sort of natural incense.
So, with her brown leather boots on her feet and her sack-shaped cloth shoulder bag, a kitchen knife inside, she set off for a kind of mystical and almost inaugural walk, with the sole declared intent of introducing herself to Mother Nature and her elements. She reached the countryside after a brisk walk with the light heart of a child who is curious and excited and discovers the world for the first time. The scent of lemon trees was intoxicating, the air crisp, the earth damp, wild fennel sprouted from the grates in the ground. Everything around was tranquil. Only in the distance could one hear a dog barking, nearby chickens clucked, and suddenly a completely black blackbird with an orange beak perched on a lemon branch.
Belinda started, remaining motionless for a very long instant. They looked each other in the eye, then with a flap of its wings, it flew away. As it fluttered, a small wooden twig fell at her feet. She promptly picked it up, as if it were a gift from the blackbird. She noted, as she grasped it, that the grip and length of the stick very much resembled a magic wand she had seen many times in movies. The twig was not straight; it was instead particularly curved and knotted. She put it in her bag and continued.
What truly matters on a walk in nature, according to Belinda, is not the practical act itself, but the intention with which every gesture is performed. The awareness of the soul exposing and offering itself to the earth, to plants, and to the animals themselves. She arrived next to an old wash house with stone seats; the water was gushing. It was a truly beautiful place, yet it had always been there, but her eyes were now new. She decided to stop, sat down, and closed her eyes to the sweet sound of the gushing water. She took the twig from her bag and smoothed it with the knife. When she was satisfied with her work, she immersed it in the water, which purified and consecrated it.
She returned home, that Monday afternoon, with her head full of new ideas and new awareness. She waited for her husband to return from work. She couldn't wait to tell him about her discoveries, like a small chemist discovering a new element, with the only difference being that the elements she had discovered existed in nature long before her and would certainly outlive her.
Elia is a thirty-seven-year-old man, typically Sicilian himself: brown eyes, thick black hair, now graying, a deliberately unshaven beard to camouflage his double chin. He is very tall and muscular, a big man, a gentle giant. In their bedroom, a photo is displayed showing them leaving the church on their wedding day. This photo is quite emblematic of their evident physical difference: Belinda in her wedding dress looks like a child on her first communion day, and Elia next to her looks like her father. Elia's hands are so large that Belinda's fit twice inside his. To kiss or look each other in the eye, they have to devise increasingly imaginative plans to be at the same height. Belinda is 1.50 cm tall and Elia is 1.80 cm tall.
They don't even resemble each other in character; in fact, she had never seen anyone more different. One could say they have nothing in common, at least on the surface. Elia likes action and adventure movies, those full of noise and special effects. Elia is a nerd, as his wife affectionately calls him; he loves anime, is a computer genius, is superlative in mathematics. His mind is rational, but not cynical; his heart is made of butter, even further softened by the birth of Azzurra. He reads very fast and writes incomprehensibly, thinking even faster than he reads. Belinda, for her part, goes crazy for French films, art-house films, those that make you reflect and feel emotional, not necessarily romantic. In mathematics, she's a disaster; she gets bored reading anime and even more so watching action movies. She hates technology; she forces herself to use the PC but then gets a headache because her head is always in the clouds.
So one wonders why they have been together for so many years and what they do in their free time. The beauty of their relationship is that they complete each other, positively influence each other, and thus grow together both as individuals and as parents.