From the armchair in her dining room, in the Sagrada Família neighborhood, Esther Vilar's hands accompany the crochet that guides the cotton thread. From stitch to stitch, she draws a lace that one day or another will adorn the feet of a tablecloth on an altar table. This is how three of the crocheted laces made by this Barcelona resident arrived at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Pope Francis' favorite church to pray alone.
When Esther Vilar starts a new lace, she doesn't always know where it's going, because crocheting, for her, is an activity that, basically, helps her a lot to work on finger mobility. She started doing it at 87, when she broke her wrist and could no longer knit, which was what she had always done. Then, a friend brought her a pattern to make a tablecloth lace, with crochet, and she became fond of it. "I don't know how many meters and meters I must have made, I haven't counted them," she says. "I've come to think that it's the hand of the Lord that makes them, because they turn out so well...".
The first ones she made were for her parish, Esperit Sant, in Travessera de Gràcia, which was where Esther Vilar went to mass on Sundays, until, much to her regret, it was demolished. For the Barcelona Cathedral, she has made a dozen laces, she has also made them for the Sagrada Família basilica, for the Santa Maria de Mar church, and for the Vatican. Saint John Lateran, the Cathedral of Rome, which is the oldest basilica in the city, also has laces from this Catalan woman, who keeps as a treasure a rosary, two letters, and a card she received from the Vatican, where the Pope thanked her for the different laces sent to the Roman churches. She, with the laces, had also sent a letter to the pontiff.
With all the ones she has finished, she has made the clock hands run a lot. "Time passes at a tremendous speed," she maintains. "I thought that, upon retiring, time would pass more slowly, but no! Time flies."
So much so, that next August, specifically on the 21st, it will be 103 years since Esther Vilar came into this world. It is and will be increasingly common to normalize a good conversation with someone who, like her, is leaving behind a hundred years. "Psychologically, the hundred haven't changed me, I do notice that I am more limited in strength and, now that I am 102, I notice that I fail on names, I often say: How do you say this? I read, but I don't retain everything I read as I used to."
On Tuesday mornings she goes to a memory class at a community center and comes home with exercises to do: "Today, do you know who was the first to find all the words? Me"She really likes to tell her age. "It makes me laugh to say it because everyone tells me: What?". She lives in her house with her children and still cooks. "I wash the dishes every day and, as long as I can, I will continue to do so," she says. On Tuesday mornings she goes to a memory class at a community center and comes home with exercises to do. "Today, do you know who was the first to find all the words? Me". The oldest and, despite the memory lapses she says she is beginning to perceive, she retains an enviable lucidity and clarity when expressing herself.He explains very well, and always does so with a good smile and eyes very attentive to everything.Her optimism, with a strong foundation of faith ---it must be said---, have been, and continue to be, the strongest pillars of her life.
When she's not crocheting, she looks for consistencies in sudoku puzzles or words in word searches. "I've set myself the goal of doing a few pages every day, and this afternoon I haven't done them yet. And sudokus, if they're second level, I can still manage," she comments. She also watches television, likes sports channels, and follows her favorite series, one of them, La Promesa (TVE). She says the actors in it "work very well."
With attention on Rome
In the last month, on the radio and television, and in the magazine Catalunya Cristiana, to which she subscribes, she has been informing herself with great interest about Pope Francis's health. "When I get into bed, I always pray the rosary, and I can do it with the whole litany every night. These last few weeks, my rosaries have been for the Pope," she comments.
Prayers with a mission in the Italian capital, which is the city where she met Antonio, the man with whom she will celebrate 72 years of marriage next May 1st. "I signed up for a pilgrimage to Rome that left from here in the neighborhood. And a brother of his was supposed to come, but he couldn't, and at the last minute, he signed up. We met on the vigil of Saint Peter and on May 1st of the following year ---1953--- we got married. Nine months later, we had our first child," she recalls. They had three, and shortly after, she became a widow. That was one of the most difficult episodes for Esther. She watched over her husband in the hospital, night and day, for four months. "I spent four months sitting in a chair, in that hospital room between two sick people. Four months without getting into bed. I lived on double coffees, croissants, and french fries. I ended up weighing 47 kilos. I didn't want to go home, because I didn't want him to die when I wasn't there."
And with three children to raise, Esther Vilar set up a beautician's practice at home. It was the best way to reconcile. She especially remembers an afternoon when she had a full schedule of visits, and cancellations started coming in. "Don't do this to me, Lord, I said. I have to take care of five people. And, so as not to get angry, I left the house. I had twenty-five pesetas and I went to catch the bus to go to my cousin's house to vent, but then I saw a blind man selling ONCE lottery tickets. He was wearing a jacket with so many stains, that I thought, poor man, if you could see, you wouldn't wear this jacket. And I bought him a ticket. I bought two identical ones because it was a palindrome and I thought: if it wins, I'll give one to charity."
The next day, the big surprise. Her palindrome ticket won 6,250 pesetas. "Do you think that was a coincidence? I don't think so," she states emphatically. And, true to her word, she shared one of the two prizes with Unicef and other people.
Technologically up to date
Esther Vilar always has her mobile phone at hand. She maintains very active communication with friends and family via WhatsApp. "I can read the mass they send me every day, and I forward it to four more people. Now that we are in Holy Week, the messages are more frequent. That's why the mobile phone is very important to me. And you see, it costs seventy euros, but it's seventy euros that are giving me a lot of joy, even before I turn one hundred," she says. "With this tiny device, I was able to follow the mass live from Santa Maria la Maggiore in Rome because the granddaughter of a brother, who lives there and is the one who took the measurements of the altar to make that tablecloth, made a video call to me at the time of the celebration, and I could hear a nun naming me: Esther, a signora lontana... who had made the crochet lace for her church. It was very emotional."
With technology, Esther Vilar had already trained herself a long time ago. "This comes from when my daughter and son-in-law decided ---in 2006--- to buy a sailboat and sail around the world. They traveled for six and a half years. Before they left, my daughter told me: If you don't learn to use the computer, we won't have communication. And I went to the esplai to learn computer science, forcibly, the most basic things, to be able to have contact, which is what's important," she states. And, of that, she is well convinced: "I believe that what's important in life is contact with people, expressing and understanding. Human contact is the most interesting thing, the small details, like saying good morning, have a lot of value."
And that is what she best keeps in her memory: the experiences with people. "Today I cleaned out papers and found so many writings that they sent me. I have classified them and I will read them again to relive what I had lived, and it will make me happy."
She has the feeling that talking about next year is talking too much: "Now it's day to day, at most, tomorrow, yes, and giving thanks for each new day"The optimistic spirit of this woman is evident. It is largely made of gratitude, to the doctors who visit her at the Hospital de Sant Pau, to the friends who send her messages and call her, and to her children who take care of her, in Barcelona and in Pallars Jussà, where she spends the hottest months. "There I feel the joy of being in paradise. The small town of Mont-ros (municipality of La Torre de Capdella) is something wonderful, the flowers, the snow ---they have sent me photos---, the chicken eggs, the wood stove, the rosemary and the changes of sun… Besides the forest, we have flowers everywhere, that's why I consider it paradise."
On Sant Josep's day, Esther Vilar still prepared the cream, although she thought it was surely the last time she would make it. Because she has the feeling that talking about next year "is talking too much. Now it's day by day, at most, tomorrow, yes, and giving thanks for each new day," she expresses. She still doesn't want a wheelchair; a cane to help her is enough, and, yes, when she goes out, she does so with her son. She also likes to explain that once a doctor told her: "Please say 'ouch!', because I never complain. And I've had severe stomach pains, and once my gallbladder was full of stones, and I was between life and death. But when the pain came, I took the rosary and prayed. I already know I have to die. Now, how? I like life, but not to cling to it."