Kids were scrambling up the rungs of braided rope again, up the middle lane now, toward the top of the blow-up castle. Gionata, learning to climb, though slowly, turned to look for me: I waved from below, where I stood shooting a little video. Once he made it to the top, he wasn’t sure if he should go down the left or the right slide, and he studied the other children, worried, trying to figure out if they were going to leap on him, because they could easily climb to where he was.

When he landed, we chatted a little. He refused to speak real Italian, was more willing to use the play words he and his mother had invented to name things (the slide, for instance, was called a “wheee!”). It seemed only natural that he wasn’t ready to be a big boy just yet: all those nights in the hospital growing thinner, paler, waking up with cracked lips. His favorite toy was his medical bag with the cartoon on the side; he hadn’t had a fever in three months.

Of the neighborhood mothers, two were sisters who used to live in my building. Over time they’d merged for me and now I couldn’t tell the older sister from the younger. They both had little girls they watched from a small colored stairway as they bounced on the trampoline next to ours. The women were dressed alike, in unzipped down jackets, white blouses, black pants. The younger sister had had some work done on her face, and now looked more like her older sister, who’d always been prettier.

Gionata shyly approached the other children, and was rejected, so he played by himself, once in a while mumbling the names of the children he knew. In my family, dwelling on disappointments means you lack restraint; sorrow is just a sign of ingratitude, not an emotion. For us, Gionata’s melancholy was a new experience—perhaps he took after his mother.

He climbed onto the trampolines and fussed if anyone else got on during his turn, scrunching his eyebrows in mountainous concentration. He was figuring out how to bounce with both feet together, and his technique was paying off: his body ricocheted cleanly.

Daniela came down the steps, shoulders a little rounded, dazed, carrying a slice of white pizza, the sky above her full of high clouds. She didn’t look like the other women in the neighborhood.

Her son wanted another coin for the trampoline, to show her how he could jump and keep his feet together. We lovingly watched him while Daniela asked me about the talk show I was developing (with Francesco) for RAI. I didn’t want to discuss the show—she’d resent me for it: she complained, sinking her teeth into her pizza, about how she’d love the chance to develop that show instead of me. She offered me her crust.