It’s because he did it without thinking.
Without the ceremony.
Without the emotion of a pre-prepared confession.
It was simply the way he was calling me now.
And at that point, I understood that the most beautiful thing was not the surprise of their anniversary.
The most beautiful thing was the ordinary life that followed it.
A life where boys were minding studying, sometimes forgetting to wash the dishes, arguing over the remote control and calling me to ask me what shopping they needed to do.
A life where I kept being the same woman who raised them.
It’s just that now I knew, without a doubt, that they too considered me their mother.
A few months after their anniversary, I found a special place for Marco’s letter.
I put it in a simple frame, next to a photo of the four of us, taken shortly before she died.
In the picture, Marco was standing behind me with his arms around my shoulders. Luke and Matteo, then still some kids were laughing in front of us.
