* * *
I smile at the rush of love in my notifications. My friends haven’t forgotten me. Not that I ever thought they would, but I’ve never tested our friendship before, save for the occasional week away on holiday. We’re connected again, even though they are hundreds of miles from me. It feels good to be striking out on my own and still being part of a circle of friends.
I’m about to reply when another text arrives, just as Giana appears with a tray of the most delicious tiny doughnuts and a pot of espresso.
* * *
Unscheduled text (sorry) just to say I’m thinking of you. That’s all xx
* * *
Sunlight bursts through the single window in Giana’s library. Books, coffee, bomboloni, sun, a new friend in my host and now a message from Sam. Today is going to be a great day.
* * *
When Tobi told me I’d be staying with his deaf friend in Rome, I was nervous. I don’t know much sign language and I didn’t want the kind lady to be offended by my lack of understanding.
But as soon as I met her, I knew my fears were unfounded. And now, two weeks into my two-month stay Giana Moretti and I are firm friends. She’s an artist and translator, originally from Chicago and one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. Her lip-reading and speech are brilliant, but I’ve asked her to teach me some American Sign Language, too. I want to give her proper respect while I’m living under her roof.
But today I discovered something about her that inspires me even more.
It’s rained solidly for the past week and I’ve been earning my keep by helping Giana reorganise her new artist studio. The roof space she’s just started to rent from her landlord in her apartment building is quite small, but even on a dank day the light is lovely. We’d just finished shifting the last of the boxes her landlord had been keeping in the room and had taken a rest, pulling cobwebs out of our hair and drinking coffee from the flask she brought with us.
‘Phoebe, how would you like an adventure?’ she asked, her nut-brown eyes sparkling.
‘You mean more than this?’ I laughed.
‘Even more than this. I have a secret I think you should know.’
And that’s when I discovered just how special Giana Moretti is.
Back in her apartment, she opened a large lidded tin box in the kitchen filled with smooth pebbles small enough to sit in the palm of your hand. ‘These are my secret weapons.’
‘You throw these at people?’ I asked.
She’s still laughing about that now as we sit at her newspaper-covered dining table, a palette of paints in the centre.
‘What do I paint on it?’ I ask, the child in me thrilled by the prospect of painting a pebble.
‘Whatever you feel,’ she says. ‘It could be how you feel today, or something you’ve seen. It could be a single word or just a picture. One thing that’s important, though: it doesn’t just have to be positive. I think the best way to live is to mark every moment, good or bad. In the moment when you feel it – whatever it is – that emotion is valid and has worth. If you acknowledge that, nothing has the power to silence you.’
And then she tells me how painting pebbles became part of her life.
‘All my life, I was told to be quiet. My words, they didn’t matter, you see. Because, in my family’s opinion, if I couldn’t hear them, nobody else should either. My family spoke first and always at once. Every day I would watch them fight to be the loudest. Even in the silence they were deafening. There was no room for my voice.’
‘That must have been terrible,’ I say, careful not to imply any judgement although I can’t believe a family could be so cruel to a child they were supposed to love.
‘At the age of twelve, I got new hearing aids. I hated them at first. The noise nearly drowned me. My family thought I was ungrateful and refused to listen to me when I tried to explain how disorienting I was finding the world. I struggled for a couple of years until a friend told me about a new group in my deaf community centre. Half of us had hearing aids, half didn’t, but we all used sign language. It was our safe place – our sanctuary.
‘One day, when I was sixteen, an artist came to visit, and he asked us to paint a pebble. That was my first. “Put something beautiful on it,” he said. “Something only you can see. And write a thought on the other side.” And then he said something that changed my life: “Your thoughts matter. Your views matter. For every time you’ve been dismissed, or felt less worthy than someone else, find a pebble and paint your beautiful thoughts. Then send it out into the world. Because kindness has power and your words have the potential to change the world. Like when you throw a pebble into the ocean and the ripples reach out, wider and wider, to infinity.”’ She beams. ‘That’s where it started for me.’
‘Oh wow, I love that.’
‘I’ve been amazed that one small pebble can make such a difference. Even if the difference is only the power it gives you to make it. If you believe your words have meaning, they will.’
Since I’ve been in Europe, I’ve wondered about the kind of impact I have. My life has. On this world. All the people I admire made a difference – or are setting about leaving their mark. I think about the novelists I studied for three years and loved for many more – did any of them realise the difference they were making while they were doing it? Do we ever really know our impact, or does it come later, when we’ve gone?
‘What made you move to Rome?’ I ask.
Giana tells me she has been in love with Rome since she was tiny, from a picture book her nonna sent her from Italy one Christmas, so when the opportunity to move here arose in her early twenties, she didn’t hesitate. I love that she followed her heart to be here.
‘Nonna was born in Rome before her family emigrated to Chicago. She died without seeing it again, so I wanted to see it for her. My parents didn’t approve, of course: they said I’d be back in six months. Well, that was twelve years ago. I am grateful that life has brought me here and that I made it happen. So my gratitude is in the pebbles and I send them out into the world to make a difference. To tell the world that I am here and I matter. I think maybe you need to do the same?’
She opens a site on her computer and the screen fills with painted pebbles. We scroll through them. Alongside the photographs are details of where people have taken Giana’s work home with them. Japan, Senegal, Australia, Portugal, the UK, Columbia, Latvia, Norway. On and on, country after country, visitors to Rome have taken their treasure back to their home countries all over the world and re-hidden the pebbles for others to find. It’s astounding.
‘Many people tell me they have started to paint their own pebbles after finding mine,’ she says. She taps the screen and I see that her page has hundreds of thousands of followers – complete strangers, joined together by ripples from Giana’s painted thoughts and now sending out their own into the world.
Looking at the photos of smiling people across the planet holding her artworks, I realise something: I want my life to make a difference, too.
We fill a basket with the pebbles we’ve decorated and head out into the city. It’s still raining but I’m buzzing with anticipation.