“When there is cheerfulness, I feel younger; otherwise I’m a little old lady.”
Rosa Pozzoni is born in 1920 in Milan, the eldest of three children; her mother owns a sewing workshop and her father is a metalworker-constructor. She would have liked to continue her studies after training as a seamstress, but times are hard and she must help her mother in her shop.
She marries in 1942 a man from Ticino who, in Milan, owns a bar; together they will have three children, although the two premature twin girls will not reach their first year. Their son, however, is still by her side. Rosa Pozzoni’s family life is not easy: working in her mother’s sewing shop, her husband’s bar, caring for a small child, and the war raging. She readily recounts wartime, particularly when she had to go down to the cellar with her newborn son whenever the sirens announced the arrival of aircraft. Her relationship with her husband deteriorates and, in 1956, Rosa Pozzoni requests a divorce, which she will obtain only after her husband’s death in 1957: she becomes a widow before becoming divorced, and at that time, that makes all the difference.
That same year, she decides to leave the shop, her friends and her relatives in Milan to move to Ticino, in order to be closer to her adolescent son, then boarding at a college in Bellinzona. At 37, Rosa Pozzoni opens her own sewing shop in Bellinzona, studies German and quickly adapts to her new life: she launches other shops, travels and remains very active socially.
She retires at age 57, but does not remain idle: she devotes herself to volunteering, offering her work to various projects.
At 98, Rosa Pozzoni is still living at home in Bellinzona; although visually impaired since 1993, her life remains very active. In 2019, she has a bad fall which results in a fractured femur, and she moves directly from the hospital to the retirement home. As long as her eyesight and her hands allow it, she takes part in all the activities offered and continues to produce knitted and crocheted pieces: «If I’m well, I do everything I have to do; otherwise, I stop.» At 103, she no longer recounts much about her childhood in Milan, but the staff of the retirement home where she lives were able to enjoy her memories until recently. For her, social life has always been important and a source of well-being; she says: «When there is cheerfulness, I feel younger; otherwise I’m a little old lady.»
She does not truly feel old; it depends on the day: «We move forward one day at a time. If they don’t want us up there, we must stay here and accept things as they are,» she says, laughing. Rosa Pozzoni has no particular secrets that explain her long life. «Or perhaps it was the coffee-grappa and the raw egg with which she started her days until entering the retirement home?» her son says jokingly.