Stresa in September is delicious: summer terrace filled with people who find it hard to let go of the season, silent Lake, calm and not yet available and release the heat that, making the temperature of this place pleasant during the cold season, attracts many tourists giving them the illusion of the sea. Nothing is missing: the coast, the Islands, the hill which then becomes the mountain.

Was the 12 by September 2006, After a few days my daughter Margaret was born. That day I met Eve.

Eva Maria Spitz Blum, my friend Eva, I had an appointment at the hotel where it had arrived the previous evening, coming from Switzerland. Invoked from California from an elderly aunt's birthday, had decided to return to places during his childhood and his youth, were long trips scenario with his father: René Spitz Arpàd.

One of the greatest psychoanalysts that fertile period that was the end of the nineteenth century, bore.

I was excited, I confess without fear: the daughter of Spitz, il grande psicoanalista sul quale avevo fatto ricerche per ragioni di studio, and with that long intrattenevo a friendly match, It was in front of me. Materialization of a trans-generational inquietò me but not complicated presentations. "I'm Sergio, I'm Eva: Finally "!

Eva I had sent a recent photo so that I could recognize: She, smiling in a pub, underarm to a poster of Obama. I will never forget it.

Intelligent and deep look, simple and so full of life from appearing, even physically, younger than many years. I learned his age by Lisa, his daughter, When in August 2009 I informed him that the 2 may, at Stanford Hospital, his mother was quietly switched off. Expecting a reply to my letter, and although it was normal among us who passed a long time before a response, only to apologize to each other for a thousand commitments that prevented us from being more timely, This time the weather was gone over and I haven't called for an answer for not having confirmation of something that maybe in felt.

There were a few cases of synchronicity that surprised both during the years of our friendship. It happened several times that the thought of hearing the other one turned them in to receive a letter.

Eva was a psychologist and in the course of his long life he did much research on folklore, on shamanism, on the use of alcohol and other drugs. She was born in Budapest in 1919 and for almost 20 years travelled in Europe with his father: René Spitz Arpàd. One of the first followers of Sigmund Freud and a psychoanalyst, experimental. Left Budapest for three months, The Spitz family moved first to Trieste to Vienna, Berlin and Then in Paris. 1938 emigrated to the United States.

Eva studied at the Sorbonne, then the United States at Barnard College, then at Harvard and at the University of Washington.

After getting married she lived in Virginia where he worked with none other than Margaret Mead, the legendary anthropologist.

And finally she moved to California, where he bought a ranch began his long association with Stanford, duration 60 years. He graduated in ' 55 in psychology, with a Minor in anthropology.

With her second husband, Richard Blum, long studied Psychodynamics and the effects of alcohol and use of drugs. These studies liportarono to work around the world: Greece, South America and Central Asia, then Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan where they founded, among other things, an Association for protecting the country's wildlife.

In ' 95 , at the age of 76 years Eve made its last shipment of anthropological research, in the Amazon, to study the healing practices of women shaman. They separated in ' 84 and then in 2005 Eva decided to sell the ranch to Shingle Mill to move to Ladera.

Remember when I told him of his intention to sell because he felt that that kind of life, that until then had been congenial, required energies in an amount that is no longer available. "Sergio", He told me, "I took a right decision in selling the ranch, even though I, My dog and my cat feel the lack of such beauty. "..

Thanks Eva, for friendship, the affection and teaching.

Sergio