Sixty-One Years Apart

Flavio Grassi - Sixty-One Years Apart

A comedy duo with a 61-year age gap. He thinks he's the wise one. She disagrees.

My name is Flavio. I'm 69 years old, I live in Milan, and I am a single father raising an 8-year-old daughter.

There are exactly sixty-one years between us.

I spent decades thinking that by this point in life I'd have most things figured out. Then G came along — and it turns out I had barely started.

What this is

Sixty-One Years Apart is a video journal and personal essay project documenting life as an older single father raising a young child. It's about the comedy of that gap — the generational confusion, the spectacular failures, the unexpected tenderness — told from the point of view of the straight man in a double act where the other performer is eight years old and considerably funnier than he is.

It began as a simple idea: what happens when you put sixty-nine years of accumulated perspective in a room with someone who has eight years of fearless curiosity? The answer, it turns out, is that the sixty-nine-year-old learns more than he expected.

G appears throughout — in photographs taken from behind, in the sound of her voice offscreen, in the stories I tell about her. Her face stays off camera. She goes by G. Her privacy is non-negotiable, and she has agreed to these terms, although she did first ask whether this meant she would be an influencer. We are still negotiating that point.

The themes we keep returning to

Perspective and wisdom — or the gap between the wisdom you think you have and the wisdom raising a child actually requires. At 69, you learn that a great deal of what once felt urgent simply isn't. Communicating that to an 8-year-old, however, is a work in progress.

Generational humor — the daily comedy of a man born before colour television trying to decode the vocabulary, logic, and priorities of a child born into a world of smartphones and instant everything. Someone has to translate. It is usually G translating for me.

Funny failures and self-deprecation — the skiing trip I will tell you about shortly. The 5BX fitness programme I restarted from the beginning, confident it would be embarrassingly easy. It was not embarrassingly easy. The conviction that I could handle the morning wardrobe question in under five minutes. I cannot.

Learning from children — the genuinely surprising and quietly profound experience of looking at the world through an 8-year-old's eyes. In Montmartre, last spring, G asked out tiny painted hearts up high on wallsI had walked straight past. It was street art — small, precise. I would never have noticed them. I have thought about them many times since.

Why document this at all

Because late parenthood — and specifically single late parenthood — is a particular and underrepresented experience. Because the distance between sixty-nine and eight is both an obstacle and a gift, and both halves of that are worth examining. Because G is growing up fast and I want a record of this strange, exhausting, joyful chapter while it is happening.

And because, if I'm honest, G insisted.

Where to find us

New videos publish twice a week on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok — talking head reflections, B-roll from daily life in Milan, and whatever G has done this week that I wasn't prepared for.

If you're a brand or publication interested in working together, you can reach me through the contact form.

A note on privacy

G is a child, not a content strategy. Her face does not appear in any video or photograph published under this project. Her name is not used publicly. She participates enthusiastically in this project in ways that respect those boundaries — which, for an 8-year-old with strong opinions about most things, is itself a minor daily negotiation.

Sixty-One Years Apart is produced in Milan, Italy.
New episodes every week on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Flavio also runs AccademiaVino, a wine education school based in Milan