A Grandmother Who Wore the Pants

Tambov, Russia, 1912. This is my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana. Tatjana was about sixteen when she posed for this photo. I love the shoes!

Tatjana liked to ride horses, and she once broke a tooth when she fell off of a horse.

Although Tatjana grew up in Tambov, she attended university in St. Petersburg. There, she studied chemistry. After my family moved to the States, Tatjana lived with us. She used to do the cooking because my Mom worked at a full-time job. Tatjana collected her recipes in a classic, 1950s, Mead composition notebook. The notebook was black with white speckles, and it had a sewn binding. Tatjana added the chemical formulas for different ingredients in the margins of those recipe pages.