THE TIE SKIRT

"...when I look at it, I can still see my grandmother’s hands, tiny, always in motion."

In her dining room with green shag carpet and lace curtains, my grandmother—my Oma—and I laid silk neckties across her round oak table. I had a teenage dream for those ties, a vision of a one-of-a-kind skirt, and Oma had nimble hands and a willing heart. On breezy summer afternoons, we cut away the ties’ backing and ripped out their seams. Her curtains danced as she helped my fingers push the fabric toward the buzzing needle on her Singer. Later, we sat on the white front porch swing, Oma knitting while I crocheted skinny snake chains from her leftover yarn.

Born Hildegard Wally Emma Raasch, she’d grown up in Berlin. As a teenager during and soon after the war, she took trains to the countryside to pawn her mother’s jewelry and other valuables for potatoes and whatever other food she could get; on one trip she was raped and her nose was broken, its contours permanently altered. Once the Allies took command, she collected rubble in exchange for her ration card, and one day she met an enlisted American soldier after he asked her sister for directions. In 1952 she arrived in New York by ship as the soldier’s wife, my one-year-old father in tow.

When my grandfather retired from the Army to farm tobacco in his Virginia hometown, Oma learned how to farm. She and I would sit on the tobacco setter together, taking turns pushing seedlings’ roots into the plowed soil while my grandfather drove the tractor. Wet brown earth smeared on our fingers as we worked. Oma taught me even as a child that my hands could be of service. Saturday nights, while my brother and I watched Hee Haw and The Golden Girls, she'd keep her hands busy peeling apples in a single graceful motion, cutting the juicy white flesh into bite-size pieces for us and eating the peels herself.

Oma was such a fixture in my life, and so much fun. She was as flexible as a young girl, and we used to do backbends together in the scrubby grass of her backyard. When my brother and I slept over, she’d pop us popcorn in her skillet and we’d stay up late playing games. I don’t remember ever being bored at her house or sitting around doing nothing—there was always something happening, and she was always at the center of it. With Oma, even doing chores was fun. 

She thought I was wonderful, and I thought she was too, and I thought she’d be there forever, but shortly after we finished my tie skirt she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and six weeks later she passed away. I was 14. Two days later, at a memorial service, I sang, “It only takes a spark to keep a fire glowing,” from the hymn “Pass it On.” Through tears, I promised to carry her spirit with me always. 

Only after her death did I learn that Oma never liked farm work. But if she was lonely or felt out of place in rural Appalachia, or if she had sorrows or dark moments, she never let on. With her, I always felt safe, loved and seen. And in the tie skirt she helped me make, which I wore proudly all through high school and which was unlike anything any other girl ever wore, I felt beautiful.

I think of Oma often. I, too, have landed on the other side of the world from my family, and my children speak Czech to my English as my father once spoke English to her German. The tie skirt is too small for me now, but when I look at it, I can still see my grandmother’s hands, tiny, always in motion. The skirt is the colors of muddy soil, tobacco plants and sky. It is the product of literal family ties, and it will always tie me to my Oma.

—Emily Prucha

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Emily Prucha lives in Prague, where she teaches English and occasionally lends her beloved tie skirt to her teenage daughter.