There's a wolf mask involved. Bear with me.

Today I turn seventy. It lands, by accident of the calendar, on a Blue Moon — the second full moon to rise in a single month, which is where the phrase "once in a blue moon" comes from. This one peaks in the small hours of May 31, 2026, and it's also a micromoon: the most distant, and therefore smallest, full moon of the whole year. A small, far-off moon for a small, far-off feeling. It suits the day.

"Dad, can we go to see that?"

We were walking through the streets of Milan, dodging the usual afternoon foot traffic, when my eight-year-old daughter stopped and pointed. It wasn't a toy store or a gelato stand. It was a street poster promoting an exhibition of Leonora Carrington paintings.

If you open any parenting book published in the UK or the US, you’ll find a stern chapter about the "Gold Standard" of childhood sleep: the 7:30 p.m. bedtime. For a child in 3rd grade (or terza elementare as we say here in Italy), the experts insist on 10 to 11 hours of shut-eye.

As a 69-year-old father, I read these guidelines and I have to laugh. Not because I don't value sleep—believe me, at my age, I value it immensely—but because these guidelines clearly weren't written by anyone living in Milan.

The Cultural Clock

A few months ago, my eight-year-old daughter was relentless. She begged, pleaded, and campaigned for piano lessons with the kind of strategic persistence usually reserved for seasoned politicians. Naturally, I caved. We did the trial lessons, found a teacher she clicked with, and I went out and bought a professional digital piano.

For the first few weeks, the house was filled with the sound of a very enthusiastic third-grader hammering away at the keys. And then... absolute silence.

There is a specific kind of dread that washes over a parent when their child approaches with a notebook in hand.

"Dad, could you check these divisions for me?"

It sounds innocent enough. I gave a reassuring nod. After all, I am 69 years old. I have navigated the logistical nightmares of airport ramps. I have directed a wine school. I have stood at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in my late fifties. Surely, a few division problems assigned to a third grader—terza elementare—would not pose a threat to my dignity.

Then, I opened the notebook.

If you listen to any modern child psychologist or parenting "influencer," the message is loud and clear: Let your children be bored. They tell us that boredom is the crucible of creativity, the moment when a child’s mind finally stops consuming and starts inventing.

We were enjoying an exceptionally quiet Sunday morning. The kind of morning in Milan where the light hits the apartment just right, the coffee is hot, and the weekend rush of basketball games and tennis tournaments is temporarily paused. My eight-year-old was buried in a graphic novel. Peace reigned.

And then, the question came.

She looked up from her book and said, "Dad, be honest with me. When the Tooth Fairy put money under my pillow... was it you all along?"

There is a particular kind of parenting milestone that no book prepares you for. Not the first steps. Not the first day of school. This one arrives quietly, unannounced, in the form of a completely reasonable request — and lands like a small philosophical bomb.
Last week, my daughter asked me to change the desktop wallpaper on the old computer I had given her.

There is a distinct difference in how a 69-year-old man and an 8-year-old girl process physical exhaustion.

If you want to realize exactly how narrow your field of vision has become as an adult, take a walk with an eight-year-old.