Unfortunately I have enjoyed little of mine grandparents, too big and too far away when I was born, but as a father I always looked with amazement and amusement at the relationship that Marco and Giovanni have both with my parents and with my in-laws. Among them there is one infinite complicity, at times on the verge of criminal association, and I candidly admit that I envy him a little.
My children are granted by grandparents things that if, when they were parents, my brothers or I had even tried to do … I don’t think we would have had more days to tell it. White sofas on which to do hours of cheerful somersaults, plump hands and maybe dirty with jam that rest happily on the glass of the doors … in short, little things like that. After all, my father, my mother and my wife’s parents have always supported: grandparents are made to spoil. And a little bit is true.
For professional reasons I followed what is now called contest and that I, who am old inside, continue to call competition for creatives. It was launched by Cartoon Network and its purpose was to find talent to be rewarded with the production of their first animated series. The winner was a young artist from Vicenza, Caterina Cappelli, with the “Retired Monsters” project. The idea? Simply brilliant in my opinion, giving way to the alchemy that is created between the generations of young people and … not so young people, who become the protagonists of the story when, due to a series of coincidences, Tobia and Maura, two children, are forced to carry out jobs useful in a retirement home which, it turns out, is not actually inhabited by any old people, but from retired monsters. And that’s where the real fun begins.
It reminded me of a very tender story; this summer with my children we went to visit some cousins I hadn’t seen for a long time. At a certain point we realized that Giovanni was gone; a look in the garden and we found it sitting with my aunt, which unfortunately is not always very well, exchanging recipes. I, Giovanni told her, am a great expert, I always watch cooking shows! And they laughed, a lot. And we with them, watching them from afar fascinated once again from that amazing alchemy.