Riccione is my childhood. I went there for the first time when I was three years old and returned every summer, for whole months, until I was twelve. My mother had rented the annex that once belonged to Claretta Petacci, right next to the hotel Carlton, and inside it I lived unforgettable moments: at ten years old, for example, the birth of my sister. Every summer I asked my mother for a little brother or sister, as if it were a gift I was owed. Every summer, punctual as a promise. I remember everything from those moments, every detail, and even today I seem to smell their scents. And speaking of vivid memories, there was a day that is still recorded in my mind as “the tragic day”.
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I was six years old, it was July first. We left as 500, me, my mother, and my grandmother: a trip of only women towards Romagna, with a very long tail on the road from Milan to Emilia-Romagna, nothing like the ones now on the A14, those back then were worse, much worse. A journey of hope, I call it, and all in all it was nice, despite an accident happening along the way. I was in the back, without a seatbelt, as was customary then, and I scraped my head a little.
Upon arriving in Riccione, they immediately took me to the hospital, where they cut some hair to treat the wound. My face was all bruised, but as soon as I got out I didn’t want to stay home to rest, so I went out anyway and went to see a swing: there was a little girl, a clog flew off and hit me right in the face.
So, not only did I have a bandaged head and bruises, I also had a black eye. The next day it was raining, and to top it off I ran into a glass patio door, which was hard to see. At that point my mother, exasperated, took me to church, to a priest, to get me blessed. I remember it perfectly, as if it were yesterday. Despite everything, it was a wonderful holiday, between a hospital, a laugh, and evenings spent in the game room of the viale Ceccarini gallery. And that’s how Riccione stayed inside me: a little crooked and beautiful, exactly like that summer. Then I went back, much later, in ’94. But that’s another story, which I will tell you.
