Voyeur - Piazza Cavour

A small girl stands in a sun patch. She’s wearing a broadly stripped red and white dress, and her hands cover her eyes as she counts under her breath. Her entire tiny body bounces with each number she says quietly to herself, the motion becoming more and more wild until she’s practically hopping and she flings her palms away from her face.

She takes off running and finds her father almost immediately. He wasn’t really trying to hide from all of her seeking anyway. His bright red shirt and equally curly hair makes them a perfect pair as he swings her up to perch on one of the lower levels of the Cavour monument.

A more elderly man comes up to them with two freshly filled water bottles and the girl instantly reaches out towards her Grandpa. He lives just down the street from his son and granddaughter, and they come here every Sunday. Sometimes gelato follows their visit to the piazza, the father getting a medium cone of vanilla, chocolate, and hazelnut, and his daughter a small cup of something fruity. The grandfather gets the same every time: a small cone of pistachio.

The grandfather does his best to run around after his granddaughter, named Alessia. He hobbles a little from foot to foot, back bent in a way that can’t be all that comfortable in order to keep her balanced on her not yet well-practiced feet. The father looks torn between making sure Alessia doesn’t fall, and making sure his father doesn’t. He lets them be, however, because of the wide smiles on both their faces.

A small fall gets a little mud on the white of Alessia’s dress, but it only takes a quick kiss to the top of her head to fix the tears that are almost present. She gets right back up and is running before her father can even bend to brush her dress off. The last thing I see is the grandfather place a quick pat on his son’s shoulder before they disappear behind the other side of the monument.