My Grandmother's Fabric

Revisiting A Memory Of A Memory

From your humble author: Today, we revisit a four year old story that was originally posted on FB but never published in a column or book. Coming on the heels of yesterday’s third grade memory, I thought we’d brush the cobwebs off this lovely little yarn - written deep in the middle of the pandemic which didn’t get much engagement at the time - and allow it to breath. And FYI, the Infant of Prague still remains safe and packed. Perhaps we’ll unwrap him soon. I hope you enjoy this look back!

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When I was a boy, a common sight in the homes of many of my relatives was an Infant Jesus of Prague statue. So common in fact, I assumed every home had one. But as things go, this is a tradition, not exclusive but particular to Polish Roman Catholics.

For 500 years, the general shape and tradition behind the statue has remained, more or less, the same. As has the look; the infant is clothed in royal fabrics and sports an imperial crown. His left hand holds a globus cruciger (an orb and cross representing Christ’s dominion over the world) while his right hand is raised up in a benedicting gesture. My aunt and uncle had one. My two aunts who lived together had one. And my aunt and grandma had one – all slightly different in size and colors, yet all representing the same thing, veneration to the infant. The more elaborately the infant was honored, the more blessings would befall the home where it resided.

My mother, on one of her trips to Europe in the 1950s, visited the original infant, today in the Church of our Lady of Victory in Prague. This is an important moment in my mother’s life because legend has it that the original 16th Century infant statue was first owned by none other than the Spanish noblewoman Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, known today as Saint Teresa of Avila.

Saint Teresa, a Carmelite friar and mystic, is the Patron Saint of headaches. Indeed, she wrote over and over in her writings about her frequent migraines. My mother’s favorite saint was Teresa and turned often to her, seeking relief from her own migraines. The headaches, as it turned out, that plagued my mother most of her life, was the growing tumor that would eventually kill her. But Teresa offered her, perhaps, a kindred soul.

Curiously, Saint Teresa is also the Patron Saint of Writers. Yet another tendril of connection I share with my mother.

And now, that connection continues with my daughter.

Over the years, as family would pass away, I would scoop up some holy relics here and there – I mean, how does one toss out a crucifix that graced the coffin of a loved one? As time went on, and I moved from place to place, I found myself with not one, but two Infant Jesus of Prague statues. One, from my aunt’s home I believe, didn’t survive a move, a broke into a half dozen crushed pieces. I kept the elaborate clothes, stored them away, and buried the shattered infant in a former backyard.

But one survived and has followed me for 25 years, his capes and dresses growing stiff, the dust inside and outside the box becoming thicker.

Until last night.

After decades in storage, after a thorough garage cleaning, the infant saw the light of day, and us three slowly unwrapped him and began the process of considering what to do with him. He remains intact, frozen in time in fact, wearing an embroidered dress and cloak from when the last aunt passed away.

“Is that Jesus?” Uma asked as we slowly unwrapped him from the stiff, dusty newspaper.

I nod. “He was your great aunts.”

But she is uninterested in mere statues. Instead, she plunges her hands into the pile of fabrics, baby sized dresses, cloaks and capes, hand-sewn, that adorned the infant through the years. I suspect these were made by my grandmother who worked as, literally, a ragamuffin around the turn of the century, collecting old, dirty bits of clothes from workers at the train yards and recycling them back into wearable items at a tailor shop.

I had forgotten how ornate and beautiful these little robe shreds were. Each color is representative of a certain period or holiday – reds and golds for Christmas and Easter, purple for Lent and Advent, and green for what my grandma would call ordinary days. Uma sees only the sparkle of beads, the thin decorative ribbons and the shimmer of satin.

“Daddy!” she says, running her hands over the fabric, unable to put her excitement into words. “Daddy!”

“These are clothes for the statue, made by your grandma,” I say. “The colors and texture each have a different mean-“

“Can I, can…” She’s not listening to me.

“Yeah, you can have them.”

“I’ll just pick out a couple, ok, just the ones I like.”

“Baby, take them all.”

“Wait,” she yells, “this is perfect.”

She dashes to the laundry basket where she keeps her stuffed animals and rummages through until she finds the creature she’s looking for.

“Slothy!”

And so, in the basement of a New Hampshire home, 75 years after her great grandmother had turned a pile of random fabric and linen into art to adorn Jesus, my five-year-old slips one of the dresses onto her stuffed Sloth. It fits perfectly.

She finds another for a stuffed cat and wraps a small narwhal under a third. Finally, she pulls out a delicate, lacy cape and wraps it around her shoulders, and there she sits, among her soft friends, triumphant.

I gently re-wrap Jesus and tuck him away for another day, comfortable in the notion that he’d be perfectly fine giving his clothes to a little girl whose smile at this unexpected bounty illuminates the world.

Someone, many years ago, wore that fabric to work, or perhaps to a wedding. My grandmother sewed new meaning into it. I managed to prevent it from turning to dust. And now Uma adorns her own stuffed monuments to childhood in reverential awe.

This is as direct a line as we mere humans can obtain, blurring the endless march of time into a comfortable evening of dress up and memory. Everything that has come before – Saint Teresa, my mother, my grandmother’s fingers plying fabric – is with us and we are with them.

And my daughter presses the white satin against her cheek and closes her eyes and absorbs the light.