Lace

On the first day of spring break in fourth grade, half a year before communism was to collapse in our little country at the end of Europe, my grandparents, dressed in their well-ironed politburo clothes, drove me three hours in their newly washed, grass-green Soviet-produced Lada to the town of Kalofer in central Bulgaria. There, I was to learn to make a type of bobbin lace called Brussels lace. It had been my idea.

My grandmother and her girlfriends gathered every week at her apartment in the center of Sofia. Sitting in plush armchairs set atop fluffy carpets, among ivory statuettes and colorful bouquets, they came together to crochet, exchange patterns, have coffee with pastries, and gossip.

The gossip was never lascivious or vicious; it usually revolved around what had happened at a women's committee meeting or whose daughter or son had married or had a baby or whose grandchild had been accepted into the Young Communist Organization. Ours was a perfect society after all, or so these ladies and everyone at school and on TV pretended. As the wives of Communist officials and prominent academics, these women had enveloped themselves in happy rhetoric. According to them, we lived in a great, sunny country where political leaders had good intentions, we had no racial problems, our women were equal to men, our poor were equal to our rich, and our Olympic athletes were superior to all others.

I loved sitting with these ladies, crocheting and listening to their conversations.

My grandmother, short and sturdy, usually in a colorful 1960s-style A-line dress and a dainty necklace, taught me to crochet when I was six. By the time I was ten, I was quite good at crocheting. I knew it was a weird, uncool thing to do. Even my best friend, Rose, said so when we walked our two dachshunds in the evenings. I didn't care. I loved watching the beautiful patterns emerge centimeter by centimeter out of, essentially, nothing—a magical web. I think I also liked the admiration and recognition I received from my grandmother's girlfriends, who often said, "Look at how little she is and how fast and beautifully she crochets." Their admiration and recognition gave me a sense of pride.

During one such ladies' gathering, my grandmother's best friend, Grandma Bonka—her hair in a voluminous, graying, classy bun, her tiny body wrapped in a tight pencil skirt and a widow's black blazer like a European movie star—announced she had ordered a blouse collar of Brussels lace. The collar would be ready in two months.

The women aahed with admiration.

"What's that?" I asked, curious.

They looked at me with pity for not knowing.

My grandmother adjusted her lavender patent leather belt across her purple-flowered dress. "I will show you."

We all followed her to her special closet where she kept her lace hidden as though it were an ancient, magical treasure. She took out a bundle wrapped in white paper.

As she unraveled the bundle, we gathered around, a benevolent coven, to witness for ourselves the delicate detail and spiderweb perfection of the marvel inside: the bobbin lace.

Grandma Bonka was just over four feet tall and, as always, stood well-balanced on five-inch stilettos, the epitome of sophistication. "This lace is difficult to make," she explained. "Only a few old women in Belgium and in the Bulgarian town of Kalofer know how to make it, and none of the young women want to learn. Soon this knowledge will be gone forever."

"Why does no one want to learn?" I asked, sad that this beauty would someday be lost.

"It is time consuming and hard on the body," Grandma Bonka said in her sing-song Russian accent (she had spent most of her youth in Moscow). "To make one centimeter, it takes more than an hour. The women who do it are hunched, in pain, their bones deformed. Plus, one needs special equipment."

Perhaps it was wanting to preserve the tradition of our ancestors or wanting the attention of these old ladies. Perhaps it was...