Cookie-cutters and hand-crocheted lace

Of childhood memories, a grandmother's love and invisible threads.

White crochet lace. A string of beads and teeny tiny round mirrors hardly bigger than a sequin, topped by a slim strip of burgundy velvet. A wider strip of cotton embroidered with a folk-style pattern of hearts and birds. Lilac chantilly lace layered and ruched over pink chantilly lace. Each and every pair of trousers has a trim added in at the hem. I pull them out slowly, one after the other, carefully unfolding them as translucent memories swim past.

Aside from a brief journey in my dad’s grip, I know exactly whose pair of hands these clothes were last touched by — my grandma Anna’s. I can tell by the way they are folded — carefully, tenderly, and with utmost precision. They had been sitting in the same drawers for almost twenty years, removed for the first time this Autumn to be stacked into a cardboard box by my dad and brought down from my childhood home in Milan to my new family home in Tuscany upon his last visit. Yet, they could be worn today without any need for a refresh or an iron.

I am not entirely sure what had gotten into him at the time —“They could come useful, maybe the little ones can wear them. Better than sitting here gathering dust in this graveyard of memories…”, he had said on the phone. I read the label on one of them —“12 years old”…well, I guess it will be a while, my eldest daughter has just turned two and the other one isn’t out of the womb yet. Still, I am touched and grateful. And amazed. I don’t know if he remembered which drawers were mine (frankly, a most unlikely scenario) or if he simply managed to pick mostly clothes that had belonged to me rather than my sister, whether consciously or not. Admittedly the style of them is quite unmistakable, if you know me — only one of us would have trims added in at the hem of her trousers. Only one of us still would. But he doesn’t know me that well, I don’t think.

My grandma did though. With a few exceptions, which mostly occurred during the cloud of contrariness and indecisiveness that defined my teenage years, she always seemed to know how to translate my dreamy-eyed descriptions into well-executed sawing projects — “Nonna, I am reading this book about fairies and witches. Would you make me something that makes you guess whether I may be a fairy or a kind witch?” or “Nonna, what can I wear to sketch wildflowers in an enchanted forest and pick wild strawberries with a straw basket?”. Even in those cases where, perhaps, I would not have chosen that fabric or that color myself, I would inevitably end up falling in love with her choice, somehow.

So enter the embroidery extravaganza, the frilly collars, the beads, the patchworks, the puff sleeves, and the crochet lace edgings. Sometimes she’d make me entire outfits from scratch, other times she would rework store-bought plain clothes into fairy-tale pieces. As I dig into the box, I pull out a flared and flowery pajama set that would have made Anne of Green Gables squeal in delight. I show it proudly to my fiancé — “You’d be wearing it today if it was your size…”, his laconic remark. Damn right, I would. I smile to myself — some things just don’t change.

My daughter’s mild brown eyes — my eyes — follow my movements with keen interest as I hang the contents on the box on an airer. “Lele hepps!”— she declares, emerging from the pile with a handkerchief decorated with the hand-painted portrait of a little girl in a pale blue prairie dress and white apron, her long curly hair tied by a large ribbon. Avant-guarde cottagecore. Evidently, it was my thing before it was even a thing. Somewhere in the box there should be a similar one — it had belonged to my sister, who never really liked it, so I eventually took ownership of it, cherishing the pair of them as prized possessions. I take the painted cloth from her and lay it gently on the drying rack while she dives nose-first into the pile again. The handkerchiefs will go in what I have now labeled as “mystery box of odd things and curiosities” — filled with lace tea gloves, embroidered collars, crochet doilies, and vintage mesh bags, all belonging to generations of grandmothers and stylish aunts from my family tree.

Most of the clothes will go in another storage box, labeled “big girls’ clothes” already filled with bigger size second-hand finds, unsurprisingly similar to the gems buried in my dad’s box — denim dungarees, prairie dresses with puff sleeves, corduroy trousers in spiced hues with matching suspenders, a shirt with a generously frilled collar embroidered by someone else’s beloved grandma. I wonder if by the time my daughters reach the right size they will actually want to wear the contents of this box — I guess only time will tell. Thinking of my girls wearing the same clothes my own grandmother lovingly made for me all those years ago has a bittersweet flavor — a hint of nostalgia blended with hope. Because I know she never got to meet them and they never got to feel the disarmingly soothing tenderness of her presence. Yet, I can’t help feeling that there is an invisible thread connecting them…somehow, somewhere.

They never had a chance to form an original memory of her, but that doesn’t mean they will never get to experience her love, even if the lines of their lifetimes never crossed. These clothes are but a physical manifestation of this invisible tie — material evidence that love endures past the limited duration of a single human lifespan, that it can be felt — just as real, just as deep— many years later. I want to believe it can even be passed on. When we bake homemade biscuits with the same cookie-cutters I used when baking with my grandma, she’s with us. When I call them “bella gioiosa” — literally “beautiful joyous one” — just like she used to call me, I hear my voice mixed in with hers. And, should dry logic have the better of me, at least this one thing is undeniable: she’s loving them through me because many of my ways of loving them come from her ways of loving me.

Some people leave indelible traces on the canvas of our lives, marks that stay with us and grow with us even once the person is gone. I am prone to believing in comforting truths — I like to think that something of us lingers on, in one way or another, once our physical time runs out. So I can easily imagine her love somehow reaching my children — protecting them, supporting them, encouraging them, soothing them, holding them in the same way I felt held by her in the past and I still do today, years after the last time my hands rested in hers. It’s easy for me to imagine it because I want it to be true.

So, every time I will see my daughters wearing the clothes she made for me, the eye of my heart will instinctively see my grandmother — their great-grandmother —enveloping them in a warm, protective hug. An embrace in another shape, that traveling through time and space found its way to the children that I know she cherishes…even from beyond the veil, even if beyond the boundaries of this lifetime.

My own beloved grandma left us around this time of year in 2018 and her memory has been visiting me in different ways over the last few days. If you have also loved and lost a grandparent perhaps recently, I hope this letter brings you comfort, softness and maybe the courage to lean into love again, even when all you feel like doing is shutting down.

With love always,

Julia