Posts about both sides of my family
The photo collage above shows various pictures of the strong women in my immediate family – my mother, and both my grandmothers. I do not have to look very far from these three women to find strength, courage and determination. Although from different backgrounds, both of my grandmothers were refugees,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.” If I can make a judgement from this comment alone, my parents, especially my father, left me a very substantial way to remember them. The tub in the photo only holds
Apparently my grandmother kept a diary. It was brought to my attention last week when a friend, who speaks Russian, was kind enough to look through the documents I have. With her help I have been able to label and sort the various papers. Now I know what I should
Dr Seuss usually knew what he was talking about, but he obviously did not know my family. Amongst a raft of other things I found in my parent’s house after their respective deaths, were an awful lot of maps, both old and new. Pictured above are three examples. Unfortunately the
Fear lurked in the background of my childhood. It was never named when I was a child but, as I grew older, I learnt its name was Communism. Both sides of my family feared Communists and especially Bolsheviks, with good reason. In her book, Upheaval, my grandmother wrote of traumatic
As if a whirlwind wedding wasn’t enough, my parents also had a whirlwind honeymoon; four days to be exact. They spent those four days split between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, staying with family friends. In the February following their wedding my father began work as a junior accountant with the