Greta and Hans live in the red house about four doors down from #17. The house itself is a masterpiece, fine woodwork on the outside that catches your eye and makes you think the house is calling to you. I’ve looked it up. It is called a Fachwerkhaus, one of the half-timbered houses Germany is known for. It is fascinating from an architectural perspective but even more when you know what happens inside.

The upper floors reach out beyond the ground floor, giving the house more room as it rises. The exposed beams are not simply decoration; they are the bones of the house. They hold everything together, even as the wood swells and settles with the weather. Almost as if the house itself were alive. I read that they even can have hand carved markings inside to ward off evil spirits.

Greta is a dressmaker and has designed the most beautiful wedding dresses you can imagine. Her family taught her how to make bobbin lace and she has incorporated it into her designs. It is not delicate like English lace, more like the tight crochet doilies that we have under the lamps. She uses it more of an accent than the full design. I think you can say that about Greta as well. She’s tough, strong, but there is always just a hint of something more interesting about to emerge. 

I catch her sitting on the bench out front most days and she is watching the crowd as much as I am. At first, it made me self-conscious to be telling all these stories because I thought they might be intrusive. One day Greta asked me what I was doing and when I told her I was writing to my mom about all the people in the village, she just smiled. 

Later, she handed me one of her ledgers which is filled with stories of the women and men who come to their house looking for the perfect dress, the perfect accessory. 

Greta writes down everything she sells and who she sells it to, but then she goes on and tells a story about the customer that feels almost like magic. 

As I flipped through the pages I realized the wedding dresses came later. At first they made their living from the smaller things. It reminds me of essays before books, advertising before movies, captions before articles. We all have to start somewhere. 

I asked her about it one day and she said there was a time when no one came looking for wedding dresses. War does not take away the need for beauty, but it can make people feel guilty for wanting it. 

Because they were German, they were often looked upon as the enemy, even though they kept a space in their home where children who were not their own could sleep and hide during the war. Greta is a proud German woman and someone recently told her that was something she should not say because it makes her sound like a Nazi. 

“Ach, so ein Blödsinn,” she says. “We were German before them, and we are German after them. Our houses are older. Our stories are older. Being German did not make them Nazis. Their choices did. They do not get to take the word German with them.”

She is tired now and frustrated. Being German, she tells me, is like her house. It was here long before that war. It carries what happened during it. And it is still standing after.

As we are having this conversation her brother, Hans enters and smiles at me. “Is she boring you?” he asks.

I say “Never. We were just talking about the villagers.” 

He laughs, “Yes, they didn’t take to us right away because we were creative, they thought they had to perform for us like they do the authors but when they finally got to know us, we realized we were home.”

Greta laughs. “I go dark sometimes, child, I go dark. We had an upbringing that was fraught. We are slow to trust.”

I sit with that a moment to see how it lands with me because I’ve always been too easy to trust and my heart has been broken a time or two. 

I ask about that and Greta says, “My dear, you must have a wonderful mother.”

I smile and tell her all about you and Dad. I ask about hers and she just shakes her head. 

“We never knew our mother.” 

I’m surprised by this because their craft is so unique. I tell them I assumed it was passed down by their mother but they both shake their heads. “No,” they say, “Father was the one who used his hands to create.” 

They go on to tell me that he was a typesetter by trade. “We still have the machine. It was a tedious job and your hands had to be clever so to keep his fingers nimble he learned to make lace, buttons and bobbles.” 

“Hans is the button maker now and I do the designing.” 

She tells me, “We have so much in store that we don’t spend as much time making the lace anymore but both of us can if we need to or if a certain color is needed for a dress. I prefer to work the lace with colored wool rather than dye it after. It makes no sense because it turns my hands so many colors but somehow making colorful lace feels more fun than taking something beautiful and immersing it in a bath of murky water. I’ve never liked water you can’t see through.”

Hans sees her beginning to drift into the past and tries to change the subject. 

“Darling girl,” he says to me, “You can take the ledgers and study them for yourself or you are always welcome here to look through them.” 

I sense he’s protecting her and asking me to leave without saying so. I smile and hand the ledger back to Greta. I take my teacup to the kitchen. 

As Hans walks me to the door, I notice a mark above the door and before I can ask, he says, “For protection.” I want to know so much more, so I ask if I can see the typesetting machine next time I visit. I tell him about your work, Mom, and he hopes you will visit. 

They are so sweet together, Greta and Hans. They remind me of something but I can’t quite put my finger on it. 

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