Cri is a butterfly, whirling happily, forgetting everything. Cri is a little long-legged swan, who dances, dances, dances until she is exhausted and whose incredible strength in such a small slender body managed to break the spell that tried to stop her dancing. How much pain, how many sacrifices, how many hidden renunciations all this has cost. And how much it will still cost her. But she will continue to twirl around the stage smiling and giving me the greatest joy of my life since the day of her birth.
Even if now adolescence takes her away from me and she is no longer the wren who almost always gave me the strength to go on, even if she is always locked in her room listening to music, talking for hours on the phone, even if she studies while refusing all my help, because she is stubborn even in this, and wants to do it with her own strength, even if now she answers me back over nothing and is always shady, while before she was an explosion of sunshine, I know she will be my baby again, taller than me and I hope wiser. I know she will return to fill me with sweetness and brighten my life, it is enough to wait for the hormonal storm of adolescence to pass. And I’m used to waiting. In the meantime, I just need to see her dance.
English version of Gloriana Orlando revised by Katie Griffiths
