"The biggest blessing of our lives. I'm on Cloud 9."
Some years ago now, six maybe, I spent two days documenting the life of Italo Ferreira and, by extension, his then girlfriend, the Disney Brazil host and singer, Mari Azevedo.
At one point in the proceedings, as we ate a traditional Brazilian dinner of various meats festooned with banana, Mari broke into song, a beautiful ode to her lover called Voce.
“Butterflies that were never there come with your scent”
“The heart of stone you melted”
“You took care of me in ways that I could never imagine.”
I predicted a quick marriage, a baby or four and a decade of bliss before the lustre wore off and mammy and daddy started to sneer at each other in the hallway, daddy jerking off into the toilet bowl after lights out while mammy enjoyed BBC videos from her separate bedroom.
Well! How wrong!
Earlier today, Italo Ferreira, who just turned thirty-one, shocked his three million strong legion of fans, and busted more than a few hearts en route, by deleting every single post from his Instagram account and leaving but one post featuring a carousel of he and his nutritionist-model gal Sofia Larocca.
View this post on Instagram
The pair are photographed embracing while Larocca holds printouts of an ultrasound of the upcoming kid.
Italo posted a quote from from the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament, one of the Songs of Ascents which were likely sung by Jewish pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for festivals like Passover, Pentecost, or Tabernacles.
“Children are a heritage from the Lord, a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior… ”
Salmos 127:3-5
Kids equal divine gift and source of strength, in other words.
Hard to argue with the premise.
Children are everything, in my opinion, and if you can punch out a few before you die, you won’t regret it.
Yeah, they might hate you down the line and blame you for all their ills, but there’s a sweet spot in there, six to twelve, where your life, and their lives, are sweet as can be.
Obvs, many surf stars jumped in below the line to congratulate Italo, including Doz, Jamie, Sterling, Raimana etc.