On 10 May 1990 my great Aunt Tata celebrated her 100th birthday. Beginning life as Countess Natalia Kleinmichel, older sister of my grandmother Countess Olga Kleinmichel, Aunt Tata saw in her birthday as Sister Mary of the Resurrection. The celebrations were recorded in this newspaper article from France, seen above
Does anyone still recite the nursery rhyme “Monday’s child”? I believe it was written to help children learn the days of the week. It goes: Monday’s child is fair of face Tuesday’s child is full of grace Wednesday’s child is full of woe Thursday’s child has
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
Fire. Australia is burning and the word is on everyone’s lips. Thankfully, at the moment anyway, my family has not been impacted. Although I do know people who live in the fire affected areas, they too are safe. But there has been total devastation, homes destroyed, lives lost, and wildlife
I am lucky that despite war, revolution and immigration, old photographs from my maternal family have survived. I do not know how some of these photos made it through the Russian Revolution. I do not know who grabbed them and threw them in their luggage as they were fleeing Russia.
These were the siblings of my grandmother. In this picture her eldest sister Clair and her brother Dima are shown performing a Russian dance. Cleopatra was called Clair as she detested her given name. She was, according to my grandmother, sensitive, kind, straightforward and truthful. She acted older than her