Ugo the Hedgehog and other Stories

By Federica Migliaccio

Ugo the Hedgehog and other Stories" is strongly autobiographical: it prefigures itself as a series of epiphanies, a coming and going in time and space that composes a larger canvas, with still blurred outlines. A path towards motherhood that starts from childhood, with indelible memories of summers at the sea, the challenges of adolescence and the achievements of adulthood, a window on the storms of the mind and soul".

• Language: English
• Publisher: lfapublisher
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220825245

Book preview

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UGO THE HEDGEHOG AND

OTHER STORIES

Federica Migliaccio

Federica Migliaccio

Ugo the hedgehog and other stories

First Edition March 2021

Isbn: 978-88-3343-327-1

Cover photo by Giulio Lizzi

LFA Publisher

Lello Lucignano Editore

Via A. Diaz, 17 -80023-

Caivano -Napoli, Italy

Partita Iva 06298711216

www.lfaeditorenapoli.it --- [e-mail]

Distribution by Libro Co. Italia -Firenze -

Rain

These are the last moments, only you and me, and I already know that I will never forget them.

In the blink of an eye these nine months have flown by and pregnancy is full term already.

What have I done with all this time?

A few walks, some time with the family and then I studied, as I have been doing all my life.

The first contractions began in July and we expected that I could deliver during the summer but, on balance, we have been waiting for more than a month. Still nothing.

Every day people ask the same question, just making me nervous.

Still nothing?

They leave me alone in the room.

The Doctor says that if she’s not born within half an hour they will perform a C-section. I feel like an animal to be dissected.

I haven’t been able to finish that book for months! Yet I have had all the time.

It is pouring rain outside.

I look at the window of my room. How stupid to leave a woman in labor alone in a room with a balcony. I would like to throw myself off everything as long as the pain ends.

I am afraid of giving birth since I was a child.

I must have seen a movie that terrified me.

I remember the feeling I got when I saw levels of Beta HCG. I was sure, how to explain it? I knew immediately that I was pregnant, even without that piece of paper.

But the Doctor in the testing lab got me apart right away.

It is low, don’t pop the champagne just yet.

That day my husband made me lie down on the chaise longue of our newlywed sofa and said You get some rest, okay?.

The midwife runs to the room. We have to go. She grabs me hard by the arm as I scream that I can’t do it, but she keeps going without stopping. Does it matter what I think?

Let’s take the elevator, it all seems like a dream to me. Immersed in a sort of numbness, it’s not me, it’s the reflected image of me in the nightmare I had since I was a child.

The Delivery Room is all steel-colored, cold, a very narrow room. Full of people.

They make me sit down, I look for my Doctor to ask for anesthesia, I scream his name, a dirty word just slipped out, but maybe it’s late: I just need to push.

LOVE

All the artists have tried to offer us the key to the most mysterious place of all: our heart. And the answer to just one question... what is love?

Love is a story written together by two people, but it is not a fairy tale, I would say more an adventure novel.

The first kiss taken on a winter evening during a walk, the first time you go to the sea together, being enchanted by watching the waves crashing on the shoreline. Love is hidden in the thousand moments in which we complete each other’s sentences, when we find the phone busy because we are calling each other. In which we would waste hours looking into each other’s eyes.

But love is also that of dark moments, those in which life upsets you, when the heart is in a storm and our world is enclosed in two hands that are held tightly.

Love is a simple life, being happy to spend the summer on a swing looking at the stars, love is a rain of fireflies that surrounds the cars of lovers.

Love is not made up of grand gestures, marriage proposals made by jumping from a parachute, a bundle of roses, love is two people who have known each other and since then have done nothing but wait to spend their life together.

Love is to shake the heart, but gently, as is done with a sleepy child who does not want to get up.

Love is when you get to know someone you didn’t know, from a sea of restless dreams and furious passions you are led to a safe haven, which was not Him, it was always You.

Expectations

They admitted me on Wednesday.

I’ve been attached to monitoring for an infinite amount of time. From the next room I hear inhuman screams.