La Luce Nella Scala

Nearly ninety days had passed since I decided to study Italian.

But Italian itself had never waited for my decision.

Most days consisted of new words, new sounds, and new mistakes—the slow and often invisible work of learning something difficult.

Long before I decided to study Italian, an Italian family lived next door.

Santina, her son, and the rest of the family carried a warmth that drew me in from the beginning. As a child, I could not have named it, but I could feel it. There was a calmness in their home. They treated one another with patience and respect. Conversations flowed without shouting. Through their open doorway I would catch glimpses of the family in the kitchen — talking, cooking, moving around one another with a loose and unhurried ease. Their apartment faced the sunny side of the building, and even the light inside it seemed warmer than ours, as though the sun knew where it was most welcome. At the center of it all, positioned perfectly on a table as though it held some place of honor, stood a small, shiny metal machine. The family gathered around it naturally, the way people gather around something that matters. Fresh pasta disappeared into one side and came out the other, changed into something new. To my five-year-old eyes, it might as well have been magic.

And then there was the cousin—la prima, as we always called her.

She visited from Italy from time to time and was a few years older than I was. She had honey-blonde hair and olive-green eyes—not so common where I grew up. Whenever she appeared, I would disappear behind a corner or a table before she could see me. Not to escape her, only to escape what happened inside me when she looked my way. Sometimes I would press myself against my mother's back and watch her from there, quiet and perfectly still. I could barely bring myself to look at her.

I think she knew.

One afternoon I entered the building and saw her approaching from the opposite end of the hallway.

Panic — clean and immediate, the kind that doesn't stop to reason.

Instead of waiting for the elevator, I turned toward the staircase. If I moved quickly enough, maybe I could disappear before she reached me. I put one foot on the first step, then stole a glance back — just for a second — and looked away fast, the way you look away from the sun.

She was already looking directly at me.

Our eyes met. And before I could decide what that meant, she started running.

I turned and bolted. My feet hit the stairs hard, my heart already ahead of me. I could hear her footsteps behind me, light and fast and gaining — she's chasing me — the thought arriving not as surprise but as pure, electric fact. I climbed faster. She climbed faster. The stairwell filled with the sound of our footsteps. I could feel her getting closer. Every step made my heart beat harder than the last.

Halfway between floors, a small landing opened beneath a window. The light that poured through it was blinding and golden, scattered with tiny particles our running had stirred — shimmering in the air around us. 

That was where she caught me.

Her arms came around me before I could take another step. I twisted and laughed and pulled, but she held on — laughing too — and then she kissed me on the cheek and drew me close, and for a moment I went still.

I remember the light. The blinding, golden light. Her honey-blonde hair shining through it. The sound of her laughter filling the stairwell.

Then she let go.

I resumed my escape — there was nothing else to do — climbing the last steps with whatever dignity remained. Near the top, I turned and looked back one final time.

She was still there on the landing, watching me go. Smiling.

I was smiling too.

Then she turned toward the elevator, and I continued upward, and she disappeared from view, and that was all.

I don't remember anything else from that visit.

But I never forgot that moment.

Italy—and the people from there—always carried a certain warmth for me after that.

Long before I understood anything about the country itself, I found myself drawn to its echoes. Each one seemed to lead back to the same memory: a sunlit staircase, a burst of laughter, and a feeling I could never quite explain.

Eventually, they led me to the language itself.

That was where it had always been waiting. 

I just hadn’t known, until recently, that I was ready to go looking.