After Sunday I’m heading for Tuscany to relax with family and friends. Lazy cappuccino mornings and red wine sunsets for a week. Not too shabby. I feel so lucky I can’t even put words to this.

Okay, today’s journal… nothing I say here will do justice to the story I’m airing from Torino tonight.

I’ve actually waited two weeks from the time we shot this story to write it… to get as much distance and perspective as possible. Not sure it worked. You’ll be the judges tonight at 5 and 7:30.

It’s hard for me to write a story I’m so close to. I suck at it. I remember when my dear friend WBTV anchor Bob Knowles had cancer and was given no medical hope to survive. I did a story on him before he underwent a radical cancer treatment. I couldn’t write it. I tried and tried and tried. One of the scripts Andy actually threw on my desk and said, “You know this isn’t the story. Write the real story.” He was right. I finally worked my way through what “I thought I was supposed to say” and wrote the story in front of me about his struggle to live… a struggle that we all knew would eventually fail in physical, earthly terms. No one had ever survived his type of cancer.

I don’t know if other writers struggle to see the big picture when they’re intimately, internally tied to the subject. I struggle.

This story is far more upbeat. It’s downright joyful. But so close.

I got teary-eyed when we shot the story. I sat here with tears in my eyes Thursday as I watched the raw tapes. Same thing happened when I wrote the story and again when Andy showed me the finished product.

My mom making gnocchi

I met my Italian family for the first time. I have more than 50 cousins here in the Torino area.

I didn’t expect the emotions I felt. They all must think I’m nuts. And they would be right.

For 45 years I’ve heard the stories. My mom is a master storyteller. Sometimes the facts are not so important. But damn if she doesn’t get you in the heart every time.

A lot of what I’m feeling here has to do with her. Her life has not been easy.

Young and poor Italian girls in the 1920s and 30s were not the popular kids in school. They were treated like all new immigrants… sadly.

She was a beauty and married a handsome English-American man with a high IQ and a damaged soul.

A few years later she buried her first-born… after helplessly watching his slight body lose its fight with Leukemia at 3 years old. 55 years later she still can’t talk about “Skipper” without crying. I didn’t understand that for a long time. Then I had a son.

WW2 had a deeply powerful impact on my father. He was never the same after his time in Europe, and drank and drank to try and wash it out of his system. As smart as he was, he didn’t understand addiction. Too weak to fight his demons he dragged his wife and children into a violent, miserable hell.

Some of you have been there. Alcoholism can crush every speck of life in a home. It’s my definition of evil.

It would have crushed ours completely if not for the unsinkable spirit of Giovanna Redding. My Bible tells me that when there is damage or hate or anger or brokenness between people on earth, someone has to make the sacrifice and stand in that gap. Giovanna never gave it a second thought. She stood in the center of the brokenness my father created and by the sheer power of her love and faith redeemed the lives of her children.

She gives all the credit to God. I can tell you that I may not know God that well but when I look at my mom and what she did for us, I know all I need to.

Fast forward to right now… as I looked around this marvelous gathering of my mother’s Italian family, it just got to me. See, they have Giovanna’s sweet eyes… and her kind soul.

These are her people. Meeting them, hugging them, hearing their stories… it all finally added up. These are my people too.

Well I have to run. Thanks for all the kind thoughts so many of you have sent along this month. It’s been great.

Ciao from Italy,

Mike Redding