Hand Me Down Sweater

    

For three weeks in May, Milos and I hosted two visitors from the Czech Republic: Iva, Milos's childhood friend, and Marta, Iva's best friend and travel companion. Both come from Milos's hometown Vysoke Myto. Iva would have come to the USA alone but for one small consideration. She has a deep fear of flying. With nurse Marta - and medication - she could manage the trip. Milos remembered that Marta's family had a store on the town square, a fabric, notions and handcraft shop. Even better, Marta's grandmother ran an ice cream and coffee shop. We'd never met Marta. Her family stayed in Czechoslovakia throughout all the political changes. She married, raised a family, and eventually settled in Karlovy Vary, where she worked as head nurse in the spa. She studied English for the trip, but not enough for conversational fluency.
Iva's family was close to Milos's family over the years until the mid-1960's. Iva is like a cousin - all the kids called the other parents "aunt" and "uncle." During the last 25 years, we have visited "cousin" Iva in Prague and in Zurich, where she, her family, brother and parents lived for about 20 years between the 1968 Prague Spring era and the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Luckily for me she speaks German fluently, though her English is quite sketchy.
Three weeks is a long time for house guests, especially when there are language challenges. Besides our excursions to Washington, New York, Lake Placid and Boston, we spent many an hour looking at old pictures and watching family movies. One evening, while we were all somewhat glazed over from watching a long ski movie made on 8mm in the early 1950's, Marta noticed that young Milos was wearing a sweater she was sure her mother had knit. "Moje mama to upletla!"
"'No!" which means "yes!" in Czech, responded Iva. [Here I translate] "She made it for my brother Vaclav. When he outgrew it, mother must have given it to Milos to wear."
"And I still have it!" Milos left the room and dug through one of his dresser drawers. He reemerged with the sweater, now somewhat the worse for mends and wear, dark blue with charming stylized animals knit in bands.
I then dug out a photo from our 1989 trip to Zurich that shows Vaclav in front of an oil portrait of him as a child wearing the sweater.

            In an album from our 1989 trip to Zurich, Switzerland, there is a photo of Vaclav standing in front a painting of him as a child posing in the sweater.

            

On her first trip to America, Marta, in upstate New York, held a fine piece of craftsmanship now in the possession of a man she'd never met before, made some 65 years ago by her mother. She lovingly caressed the wool animals and smiled in recognition, but refused to hear of taking the sweater back. It had already been handed down to good hands.