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My Grandmother's Opera dress
When I think of my grandmother what comes to my mind it’s her stories. She loves telling us all the things she got to do when she was young; for everything she carries a memory. Nun’s school, hitchhiking through Europe, climbing the Swiss Alps, buying a Volkswagen and traveling through all the Scandinavian region with a friend and sleeping by the side of the road in a tent, having Russian officials living at her house during world war 2, living without her family in west Berlin, with the wall separating them. She, a free-spirited, wild, strong and courageous soul has lived through all sort of things. Among all, she has always loved fashion, and she has been pretty incredible at it for as long as I can think, always catching everybody’s attention. I remember she would tell us about how in the 70s she always wore big red platform shoes with bell bottom jeans. Gigantic belts and high waisted jeans at the 80s. Making her own clothes when she couldn’t afford them. But later, with time, about how she wore her mink coat for important social events.
But the story about her opera dress, that’s a good one, one of my favorites, its simple but translates how she was when she was about 20 years old. Among all the great things my grandma did, she studied to become and electrical engineer, it was complicated back then for a woman to major in this type of career, but she was like that. Nobody could tell her she couldn’t do something. As a student after classes she loved to go to the theater to watch the Opera. Wearing her black 20s vibe dress and classy high heels. She rode her bicycle, a gift from a friend, from school to the theater wearing her dress and some old tennis shoes. “You cannot ride a bicycle in high heels!” she said, as if that was the craziest thing a woman could do. The Opera was a place she could rely on to bring her peace, a place that could make her company when she was alone without her family. When telling the story she always lightens up, as if somehow the memory was not several decades old.
Not long ago she made me try it on, it was such a strange feeling. She loves this dress, maybe not because she likes how it looked, nor how it fit, but because it takes her back in time
