Several hours before Roberto Pietroforte left for Trieste, whence he will fly back to Rome for a few more days of rest before his return to Boston, we had a leisurely talk. Much of the time he was in Motovun, and he was here for two days only, we were surrounded by people. Our talk focused on work, mutual friends and colleagues, as well as family life. After an hour or so of easy banter, he lit another cigarette and changed the subject: “You know what I like about you?” A promising subject, I thought. “Tell me,” I said calmly so as not to betray my budding interest. But he started talking about my mother, instead, whom he knew quite well from many visits to Reading throughout the Nineties. Like many of my friends from Italy, he enjoyed her old-fashioned Italian. “She loved you so very much,” he said and paused. I nodded. “Your extraordinary self-confidence would be unimaginable without her,” he made his point with feeling and paused again. I kept nodding. Love unconditional comes up quite regularly whenever my mother is mentioned among my friends. At this point Roberto changed the subject one more time, and started talking about his own mother.