Family

Before last Christmas I treated myself to a Camp Snap Pro. It’s a simple point-and-shoot camera, born with the idea of being used without too many expectations.

Last night my father-in-law came over for dinner. We had chicken, which he loves, and drank a great chilled Falanghina he’d picked up the previous weekend in Guardia Sanframondi. Then my daughter suggested he see the photos from our last trip: I still had them on my Mac, so I screen-shared to the Apple TV. It was a happy moment, cheerful and shared. Then, when we were done, as I was setting down the little glass of homemade Nocillo my mother makes, the goddamn MacBook slipped out of my hand and the fucking screen shattered.

At the beginning of July, my daughter tripped while playing basketball. It seemed like a simple sprain, but it turned out to be a hairline fracture of the fifth metatarsal. Brace and rest. Two weeks later, we were supposed to leave for the seaside.

When my daughter gets a haircut, she comes home sad and angry because she doesn’t like it, that haircut, and then her mom washes it again and fixes it, and she looks at herself in the mirror and smiles, and then, in bed, under the warm covers, shortly after, happy, she tells me, Dad, I love my hair.

Yesterday we were having lunch at my parents’ house. At the end of lunch, my daughter, driven by some unknown motivation, asked her mother if Santa Claus really exists. She’s getting on in years, and we expected the question sooner or later. We hoped later rather than soon.