Marco Carrera and Adele's father-daughter relationship

Marco Carrera and Adele’s father-daughter relationship develops from a bond that Adele’s therapist identifies as unusually close into a sustained practice of care. Marco rearranges his family life around her needs, later accepts her decision to raise a child without a father, and helps welcome Miraijin. The relationship gives him a powerful sense of purpose, even as he worries that his devotion and Adele’s attachment may be too heavily intertwined.

A bond recognized in childhood

When Adele’s distress about attending school continued, she began meeting twice a week with Dr. Nocetti, who called himself the Magician Manfrotto. Asked what they did in their sessions, she answered only that they played. Shortly before Christmas, Dr. Nocetti spoke to Marco and Marina without Adele present. He interpreted the thread Adele described as connecting her to the walls as, instead, a sign of her close and exclusive bond with her father, formed, he believed, because she feared losing him. He recommended that she spend substantially more time with Marco—ideally, even more than with her mother.

The recommendation required a change in the household’s established division of labor. Marco had been less present in Adele’s daily care, while Marina carried more of the routine domestic work. He began driving the three-quarters of an hour to Tor Carbone twice a day, took on the tasks Marina had handled, and reduced both his secondary pursuits—photography, tennis, and poker—and some of his work as an ophthalmologist, including conferences and competitions. Though this meant giving up activities and professional commitments, he was surprised to find that caring for Adele made him feel better rather than deprived. The shift was harder for Marina, whose daily life had been organized around those tasks.

Care alongside independence

As Adele grew older, Marco’s care took the form not only of staying close but also of making room for her independent life. While she was a minor, he accompanied her discreetly to places where she surfed and climbed, such as Capo Mannu, La Gravière, and the Gorges du Verdon. He would spend the day on his own, sometimes join her group for dinner, and wait for her to return to their lodging. She returned voluntarily, and he came to trust the freedom she exercised with care.

When Adele began attending the group without him, Marco had to live with the anxiety of her absences. She studied motor sciences at the faculty across from the eye clinic at Careggi Hospital, where they often met for lunch, and worked part-time at a gym, teaching aerobics and, later, climbing to children and beginners. Her earnings helped pay for her clothes, fuel for her Twingo, and her psychoanalyst. Marco had saved money to support her for years, expected that she might leave Florence, Italy, or even Europe, and had prepared himself for her departure. He understood his role as support for a daughter who was building a life of her own, not as a reason to keep her from it.

A decision that renews the bond

Adele’s pregnancy nonetheless confronted Marco with a future he had not anticipated. She told him the child would be the Man of the Future and would be born on a special date; she would not identify the father, and Marco accepted that she had decided to become a single mother. Her certainty unsettled him. He felt love, pity, guilt about the difficult childhood she had endured, and concern for her stability. He also wondered whether their bond had become too intense, or whether her choice might reflect harm arising from the family’s earlier troubles. These were his doubts, not conclusions about Adele’s motives: her long period of stability in Florence offered counterevidence to his fears.

The decision to include Marco in the birth was Adele’s. She asked him to be present, and he agreed after considering his own discomfort. At eleven in the morning on October 20, 2010, he sat with his legs in the tub and supported her through Miraijin’s water birth, alongside the midwife, Norma. The experience overturned his earlier association between being present at a birth and helplessness. He felt useful and part of the event, and later understood the time when he, Adele, and the newborn remained in the water as the happiest family experience of his life. Adele presented the child as the Man of the Future and emphasized that the child was a girl, joining her vision of the future to a new family arrangement.

Purpose, anxiety, and lasting care

For the nine years that followed, Marco’s life centered on maintaining a small, fragile world around Adele and Miraijin. He worked, handled everyday responsibilities, cared for family members, and supported Adele as she studied, worked, and returned to surfing or climbing to find renewal. When Adele went away, he remained with Miraijin; his anxiety about his daughter’s absences did not prevent him from supporting her need to leave and return on her own terms. He came to understand this as a form of steadiness: Adele could seek the natural world and come home to care that did not demand that she give up her independence.

In retrospect, Marco describes this period as a source of strength and pride he had not known before. He had once expected Adele to leave, yet her decision to remain close and raise Miraijin with him gave his daily labor a purpose. He later says that his life does not disgust him: unlike many lives, he believes, it has a purpose—to bring the future child entrusted to him into the world. His language conveys both gratitude and the weight he places on that responsibility.

The bond is not represented as uncomplicated. Marco’s love coexists with guilt and apprehension, and he recognizes that being the person Adele relies on may make their closeness feel burdened or excessive. Yet the relationship also rests on practical choices: he changes how the household works, supports Adele’s independent pursuits, accepts her decision about the child’s father, and takes part in Miraijin’s birth. Its significance lies in that combination of devotion and accommodation: Marco’s care is central to Adele’s stability, but it matters that he learns to accompany her without dictating the life she chooses.