Driven to you - OP81

In the quiet of early mornings, when the house is still humming with sleep and the light spills in soft through the linen curtains, Costanza and Oscar often find themselves in the kitchen together. He makes the coffee—always strong, always without sugar, the way she likes it—and she slices fruit for the twins' breakfast. It's become their ritual. A quiet tethering of two lives from opposite ends of the world.

Because while Oscar and Cocco have been inseparable since their teen years, raising children from two cultures—two languages, two climates, two sets of childhood memories—is something they're still learning.

Their twins, Elia and Sofia, are almost three now. Born in Turin, with Costanza's blond hair and Oscar's brown eyes, they toddle between Italian lullabies and Australian picture books, homemade agnolotti and Vegemite toast, Nonna's garden and Grandpa's backyard pool in Melbourne.

At first, it was unspoken—the subtle push and pull of identity. Which language to speak at home? Which holidays to prioritize? Would they be more Italian, or more Australian? But over time, Costanza and Oscar stopped asking either-or questions. Their children would be both. They had to be.

It started with the smallest things. Cocco would sing to the twins in Italian while bathing them—old songs her grandmother used to sing. Words that wrapped around them like warm blankets. Oscar, meanwhile, carried Elia on his hip through the garden, pointing out flowers and bugs and narrating the world in the flat vowels of Melbourne English.

"Elia, mate, that's a gum tree, not a climbing pole."

"Sofia, amore, lascia stare le foglie, sono sporche."

The twins grew up with both, bouncing between "ciao" and "g'day", depending on whether they were spending the week in the UK, in Italy with Costanza's family, or a brief escape to Australia with Oscar's.

When they argued, as all young parents do, it was rarely about love—it was about approach. Oscar was casual, instinctive, emotionally steady. Costanza was passionate, protective, prone to bursts of worry followed by unstoppable affection.

"They're still little," she'd say. "We have to teach them how to hold both parts of themselves."

Oscar would nod, sitting on the floor with Sofia in his lap. "And we will. They've got the best of both sides."

One Christmas in Melbourne, Elia refused to eat his pasta unless it came with extra parmigiano. Costanza beamed. "Il mio figlio italiano."

But the same week, he also threw a tantrum when they wouldn't let him wear his beach hat to bed.

Oscar only shrugged. "And there's my Aussie boy."

Cultural moments made their way into parenting decisions. When Sofia got her first cold, Cocco instinctively made warm broths and insisted on wool socks and natural remedies. Oscar, meanwhile, calmly read the dosage on the children's paracetamol and suggested fresh air.

"We're not wrapping her in garlic cloves, Costanza."

"My Nonna did it and I'm fine."

"You're wonderful. But we've got medicine now."

Still, Oscar never challenged her instincts. He knew the traditions rooted in her ran deep. She trusted his calm, and he leaned into her fire.

They kept bilingual books on every shelf. Cocco taught the twins to count in Italian. Oscar introduced them to Australian animals through picture books. They both had rules: Sunday lunch was sacred, and must involve a proper sit-down meal (Cocco's rule); summer evenings meant no shoes and backyard chaos (Oscar's).

Their friends often asked them if raising children between cultures was harder. It was, sometimes. Like when the twins were slow to speak because they were decoding two languages at once. Or when family expectations clashed—an Italian baptism versus a low-key naming day. But it was also richer. Deeper.

Sofia calls her grandfather in Melbourne "Nonno Chris," a combination nobody planned but they all loved. Elia carries his stuffed kangaroo in one hand and a Ferrari toy car in the other.

Sometimes Oscar wonders how they make it work. He doesn't say it aloud often, but in the quiet of night, when Costanza is asleep beside him and Elia is curled up at the foot of their bed after a nightmare, he thinks about how improbable all this seemed once.

Back when they were just two teenagers curled under a tree after school, dreaming about growing up. When he hadn't yet told her he loved her, and she hadn't yet taught him how to be vulnerable.

Now, he watches her teach Elia to tie his shoes, in a mixture of Italian and English, her voice warm and melodic.

"Il nodo, amore, guardami. See? Now pull."

He watches as Sofia learns to say "mamma" and "daddy" and "mamma ti voglio bene" in the same breath. He sees his wife in her, fierce and soft. He sees himself in their stubbornness.

He sees the future.

Sometimes, they talk about moving back. To Italy. Or to Australia. Just for a few years. So the twins can feel what their childhoods were like.

"I want them to climb trees in my dad's yard," Oscar says.

"And I want them to run around the piazza with their cousins in Turin," Cocco says.

So maybe they'll do both. Maybe they'll find a way.

They've started keeping a family diary—a tradition Oscar was skeptical of at first, until Cocco handed him the pen one quiet night in early spring. Now, it lives on the bookshelf between parenting books and recipe clippings. Pages filled with Elia's first word in each language, Sofia's first step, little watercolor doodles Cocco painted during nap times.

One entry, written in Oscar's scrawl, simply says: She taught Elia to say 'mi piace il sole' today. He grinned the whole time. I think we're doing okay.

Raising bicultural children means letting go of some of your own childhood expectations. Oscar never thought his kids would eat polenta and listen to opera on Sunday mornings. Costanza never imagined hers would squeal with joy over backyard cricket and call an esky a "cooler bin." But here they are.

In moments when it feels too much—when passports are misplaced, or time zones stretch the distance between relatives—Oscar looks at Cocco and thinks, Thank God it's her.

She is the glue, the soul, the emotional center. She's the reason they found the strength to fight for everything: the rookie contract, the legal battles, the long-haul flights with toddlers. She's clever in a way that is practical and brilliant, with her color-coded schedules and emotional fluency, but she's also intuitive. She sees things in their children Oscar doesn't always notice.

"They're changing," she told him once, when the twins started switching between languages in a single sentence. "They're blending. Becoming something new."

Oscar had smiled. "Just like us."

One evening, they lay on the grass in the small patch of yard behind their UK home, the twins asleep inside. Fireflies blinked lazily overhead. Cocco turned to him and whispered, "Do you ever think we did too much too soon?"

Oscar reached for her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles. "Maybe. But I've never once regretted it."

They didn't follow a traditional timeline. Married young, parents young, responsibilities that would have overwhelmed other people. But not them.

And now, they raise their children in a house full of stories—in two languages, across two continents, with two hearts leading the way.

Because raising bicultural children isn't about choosing sides. It's about giving them more than one.

And Costanza and Oscar? They were always good at building something whole from two hearts.