A Drop of Earth, A Drop of Sea
This is a bit of a funny story, very colorful and musical enough to be read aloud. (It’s also a true story, but don’t tell anyone about it).
It begins like this: one day a Drop of Earth who lives in the desert and gets bored to death sets off on the adventure.
At the same moment, on the other side of the planet, a drop of the sea full of impatience and extremely bored comes out of the water and sets off, too, on an adventure.
They don’t know what they will find, but they know what they are looking for: they want to see what’s in the world out there, they want to see beyond their nose, to discover the world, to live.
Both arrive, after a long journey, in the country of QuiEOra. A magical and beautiful place, full of wonder. From then on, many things happen, also important for us human beings, who move around the world with our baggage that is a little too heavy with emotions, reactions to emotions, rules and learning.
Written by Claudia Ravaldi and illustrated by Flavia Zuncheddu Goccia di Terra – Goccia di Mare is dedicated to the world of “difficult” emotions. There are emotions that, in and of themselves, aren’t really difficult—because they’re natural—but they’re considered“rude” and have no place in our culture. One of these is sadness, which is seen as a punch in the eye—something we’d really rather not see. We don’t like dealing with sad adults. We don’t like dealing with sad children, who are taught—almost as a first lesson—to “not cry,” to “stop crying,” and to “be a good boy, a little man, or a little lady.”
It was truly fortunate that Flavia and I one day on an island we like so much, while the mistral was blowing, we met a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the two Drops, named Ayla, and that he told us the whole true story.
Thanks to her we discovered some very important things, born that very day from that meeting, in the town of QuiedOra. Our precious tears, in fact, are precisely the daughters of the daughters of the daughters of those first Drops, who long ago set out to look for themselves, and met halfway.
After knowing this story in detail, with her hair ruffled by the mistral, Flavia and I think that good children cry and that they can cry if they feel like it. We also think that good children have good parents who remember they can cry, when crying is one of the few things to do and just, we need the ridiculous tears massage (the details, at the bottom of the story). I, Flavia and even the Maestrale, believe that true skill is, nowadays, learning to have respect for our emotions, to welcome and transform them with patience and love.
In our culture, this path is difficult and considered a bit “rude”.
We think it’s never too late to really get “good”. And to learn to love us a little more than we have been taught, generation after generation, by all those who have never met Ayla the drop of heaven.
Enjoy the reading!
