Posts about both sides of my family
Now and again I pull out one of the large plastic tubs which house the memorabilia I brought from my parent’s house. Much of the memorabilia is letters, documents and various bits of paper, written in Russian or German. There is not very much in English. If I ever have
Last year, I wrote this post about four ways to research your family history. This week I discovered the limitations of research while I was writing an essay for my study. The task was to write a short narrative on a person, place, time or event, using techniques based on
I have several genealogical charts of my father’s family. A couple of them comprise the entire family, one of them is only of my father’s direct family, and one of them includes the children of the females in the family. All of them contain valuable information; names, birth dates, dates
When I closed the door for the last time to my father’s house, I took with me boxes of documents, certificates, letters and bits of paper with scribbles on them. Most of these were either in German or Russian. I can order a coffee in German. I can count to
New Year’s Eve conjures pictures of countdowns with clocks striking midnight, fireworks and corks popping out of champagne bottles. I have spent many a New Year’s Eve with those pictures and sounds, surrounded by family and friends, or one or the other. Lately the night has been quieter. There is
Christmas traditions can be made, remade, forgotten, remembered and reinvented. One of the traditions I used to love was reading from Tasha Tudor’s book Take Joy! as we gathered around the Christmas tree, just before we opened our presents. I inherited my mother’s copy of the book and I still