Dora Gets Her Wish

My Mother's maternal Aunt, Teodora ("Dora"), liked it when people paid attention to her. An auburn filly with green eyes and a porcelain complexion, Dora was a rare beauty in the mousy Baltic States. Her fashion sense was keen, and photos show her transforming from Gibson Girl to Flapper to Glamorous Vixen. Even in the steely, Soviet 1950s, Dora looked like an unpracticed double for Joan Crawford.

Dora also was, as relatives whispered delicately, "ahead of her time." In the 1920s and 1930s, she worked full time as a paralegal in a large notarial office whose most important clients were British. At night, Dora played the background keyboards in cinema houses for silent movies. In dour Lithuania, she wore sleeveless dresses sewn in bright colors. She waited until her thirties to marry. When she did wed, she married a twice-divorced man, and she chose not to have children.

Mariampolis, Lithuania, 1920. This is my Mother's maternal Grandmother, Zigmunta, and my Mother's maternal Aunt, Dora.