My father was a hoarder. His house was not as bad as those you see on television, with stacks of newspapers lining the walls and furniture balancing on top of each other in the corners, but he certainly kept stuff. So much so that, when he died, I threw out
I remember a friend once telling me that, after the deaths of her parents, she found only an empty envelope in their safety deposit box. I found rubber bands and paper clips in the safety deposit box my parents had, although I admit that wasn’t all that was in there.
I was excited when I found several books at my local library on the Russian Revolution, including a few memoirs. I recently began to write a historical novel, set during the Russian Revolution and loosely based on the last couple of years of my maternal grandmother’s life. As some of
I never know what treasure I will find whenever I dig through the countless documents, certificates and photographs left to me when my father died. There is documentation from both sides of my family, mostly in either German or Russian. But now and again I stumble across something in English,
“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea… whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.” John F Kennedy The ocean has played a part in the lives of both sides of my family. In
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