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I lived many moment, Thomas, in which I thought I reached the top of happiness.
And it was like that, probably, when I got on my first bike in via Pascoli. And
it was like that the first time at the seaside. The first time travelling alone.
The night of the first kiss. The morning I left the hospital. The day I was told
that I was definitely healed. The afternoon I took my first motorbike. The day
of my first salary at the superstore on Varese Lake. The moment I hugged my dad
at the end of New York Marathon. The morning I skied on the Tonale with Alberto
Tomba. When I played soccer with Alex Del Piero. The moment they awarded me and
I heard the National Hymn (inno di Mameli) at the Olympic Games in Athens.
Surely the moment I looked Patrizia in the eyes, my Patrizia, and I read she was
the woman with whom share everything, built together the second half of my life,
my love, my overwhelming fan from the very first time, my shelter for fatigue
and weakness but also the mirror of my joys and of my exaltation, of my
enthusiasms, Patrizia able of temper them and then relaunch, she who knows me
and knows how to interpret m like no one else in the world.
And then the moment I turned to her and said yes, the day of our marriage in
2006. And again when we knew we would have been no longer two, but three, and
they were nine months of new joys sharing, and new hopes, most of all new
certainties.
I thought I lived the most intense emotions, most rewarding moments. When I
rowed for the first time on Varese Lake under my father’s eyes. The first time I
got on the crutches on the downhill of Cappelle. Or by bike on Sacro Monte with
my friends Garzelli and Zanini. When I landed in Austin and met Lance Armstrong
and his devastating force. When I won also the third marathon, with the
compliments of New York mayor. When I left from Bruxelles for the Tour of Europe
and all TV were there for me. When I succeeded in conducing alone my first
program on sport for disables. When in the Netherlands I opened the prologue of
the Giro d’Italia, and there were one hundred thousand people to admire me on
the streets of Groningen. When I kissed the Pope’s hand.
The you came, with your smiling eyes looking at me, and I understood that till
that day I joked, and I did not see anything so extraordinary, so rewarding and
gratifying. This book is for you, my little one, and for all children who want
to believe that you can always draw a beautiful, funny, exciting world, that all
you need is a little fantasy, you just have to want it, you just have not to
stop to what people say, you just have not to bow to whom wants to decide for
you, to whom tells you there’s nothing left to do.
It’s you, Thomas, wonderfully going to your first candle, the deepest reason,
evident and toddling of all I did and will do, the meaning of so many battles
and the joy of having won them all, and you are here only because I made it
through. And seeing you asleep on my leg exploiting admirably that hollow that a
far disease left me, it’s the answer to all the questions that chased after me
in all these years: when between a drip and a chemo cycle, I wondered if
basically it was worthy, to suffer so much and seeing the signs of pain in the
eyes of mom and dad, I knew there’s always a reason, also if I did not know it
had your blonde hair and your first cries, and all the fantastic things we can
do together, you’ll see, nobody will stop us.
And when you’ll hold my hand and tell me: "daddy, can you tell again about that
child to whom happened so many things?", I’ll start from the beginning, when I
was like you, and slept between mom and dad, dreaming of a wonderful world and
of a life full of joy and happiness. Just like the one I’m living in.
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Luckily it does not happen to everybody, but to someone life makes a leap.
Unforeseen facts, hard to accept, sometime terrible for the consequences they
impose and after the fall finding the strength to stand up again it’s hard, it
can be human not succeed in.
That’s why who does it, is looked by the others like the one that transforms a
misfortune into a chance, a tragedy into a success and that those one looking
are many or few, their eyes see these men like heroes. This strengthens the self
confidence of whom did it and in the awareness of having overcome a test that
would have unnerved many other instead, one can even get to feel almost pleasure
in looking at the mirror. Because also if it reflects the image of a maimed
body, it’s right what it shows that give the measure of he did despite of the
misfortune that the faith tried to impose.
However there are also people who had no need of incentives to produce this
magic, they love life and the strength to go on, they have it, that’s all.
Indeed, they so much of that, to be able to offer some to who’s suffering for
their misfortune and also after the storm has passed they keep on feeling
everyday people, who simply has known how to do what they had to.
I think that Fabrizio Macchi does not feel like a hero for having had the
ability to carry his life beyond the enormous obstacle he found on his way and
neither has he thought someone should admire him for what he did. It’s for this
reason that he has not decided to paginate his story to self celebrate, but
because he is aware that an experience such as his, told by the simple truth of
facts, in a raw but delicate way, moving but funny at the same time, proves
unequivocally that a hope does exists and has to be pursued always, if the man
can be stronger than male if he knows to dig inside of himself and find those
hidden energies that everyone of us has.
Of course, for some it’s easier, but it’s just when you tell that there’s a way
that we can stimulate the saddest skeptics to try, then the difference they will
know, better, they will have to know how to recognize by him.
Anyway, Fabrizio did something exceptional and I have no claim to make him admit
it but I’m the one who says so. And who says so is someone who after having
chewed sport and competitions for a whole life on a pair of strong and muscled
legs inherited with pride from God, he scarified his own passion and for this
reason today he starts to understand what practicing sport with "differently
ables" means.
Believe me, there’s nothing different in the sweat of who is not able to move in
classic way Mother Nature invented. There is the same passion, the same will to
communicate, the same commitment and even a more extreme determination than
stronger athletes have. Not because they have nothing left in their lives, those
are lies, but only because if a person had the force to “show the mid finger” to
a destiny trying to pushing him down, is undoubtedly a man of strong character
and he will easily get satisfaction from his necessary sacrifices to pursue till
the end.
Fabrizio did also this, and he did it, I’ll say! With a record after the other
he gave light to Italian Paralympics sport. Maybe some of the extraordinary
results he achieved you’ve heard about, because his sport gestures had for their
importance a media echo that rarely is dedicated to such an athlete. But do not
be surprised: that same extraordinary athlete he became, is the same person who
as a child knew how to defeat a bad disease, that once in awhile seamed to slow
down to then resurface with sadism in those moments when hope just reappeared.
That instead of wanting strength, knew how to give strength to his parents
intimately desperate and all this of course not with the enormous effort but
short in one only kidney shot, but with a constant tenancy that he made last for
all his adolescence.
Someone may think that I wrote these words of mine to convince the reader, dive
into the book and you’ll soon discover it’s not so. Fabrizio will think my words
are too much, not because of false modesty, but because he is so concentrated in
going on, not to be able to see his credits.
He is a human being too, I’m sure of that, the only narcissist hope he brooded
inside writing his biography is similar to the one I’ve dreamed of.
To mirror one day in Thomas’ eyes, his son, while the child who became a boy,
proudly closes the last page of the book he just read and that tells about his
father.
A father, dear Thomas, I vulgarly add, whose destiny took a leg away, without
understanding that in conclusion he was doing him a favor, because this was
useful for making room to those two huge things that once were your first home… |
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