Moira is a 76 year old woman living in Cuggiono (Italy). I met her in the Eremo di Miazzina, a recovery hospital for old people north of Lago Maggiore. At first I thought her funny Italian accent had something to do with the people living in the mountains. But when I asked her where she came from she answered "sono inglese". As conversation continued in English I said, "you are not English, you are English". The accent I know too well but this was an Irish-born, Scottish-raised woman whose family actually came from Flanders and received the surname "Holland" from their area of origin. In Britain, the Hollands where linen weavers, a Flemish speciality of those times (19th century I suppose).
Anyway Moira left home at 19 - she did not get on with her stepmother - and embarked on a ship. The next thirty years she worked as an onboard chef, traveling across the Oceans, from South America to the Caribbean Islands. She learnt to dive a bit and water ski.
I asked her what was the most beautiful place she ever visited:
"there are not beautiful places, it's the atmospheres, flying from Lima to Caracas, the Amazon forest below me like an endless carpet, in 1986".
Today, Moira is learning to walk again after breaking her hip and spending 12 days in reanimation.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento