"There are days when, as I look into my daughter’s eyes, I see her mother, my wife, reflected in them. I still feel guilty, just like that time when I couldn’t hear her mother screaming inside that hospital room. 'Didn’t you hear me screaming at the top of my lungs in that room?' she sometimes jokes, adding that she needed my help more than ever in that moment. At times, I think I’ll never fully accept that there was nothing I could have done for her if things hadn’t turned out well that morning, and I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.
At the same time, I think that as we continue to retell the story of how that day ended, it brings out the best in us—as people, as parents, and as a couple in this relationship.
There isn’t a beautiful memory left of what happened that day. Let’s say it’s a memory that began as something terrible, followed by one far better—the best one. The way our daughter was born that morning remains the most beautiful memory of my life.
When I think back on what happened, I remember very little. My wife was giving birth here in a hospital in Milan. Everything seemed to be going well until she started feeling unwell during labor. I saw her faint right before my eyes. From that moment on, I only remember being taken to another room while the doctors tried to understand what was really happening.
In that moment, I remember feeling more homesick than ever, missing home in Caracas, Venezuela. It's not easy living far from home, where family remains emotionally distant, where you were born and raised—especially during difficult times like the one my wife and our family were going through at that moment. We were alone, and I felt as if the whole world was completely collapsing around us.
Then Vittoria was born, and everything my wife and I knew of that world before that day was set aside, as if put away in a drawer, replaced by a rare kind of love. After her birth, home no longer feels so far away. With one of her hugs, with her, home is wherever I go."
