My Russian grandmother would tell tales of Anastasia (she pronounced it Ana- stas-eea!" who made a deep impression on her.. She and her four sisters wore Victorian whites and great bonnets also...She studied four languages. But it was her sister, my Tante Dora, ten years younger, who really kept the Samovar on the boil...She had the samovar for starters- and a good number of antimacassars..She also presented me , at 11 with what she called the "Tsarist brassiere"- it was a lovely ivory silk brief camisole embroidered with flowers. It happened that my Tante Dora had been a corset maker in Russia and she claimed to have supplied the gran duchesses with what are now called "training bras"...The brassiere was so exquisite I never wore it- I just outgrew it...but I enjoyed the twirling dances Tante Dora performed in our Bronx apartment- when even my more acerbic grandmother would join in a heartfelt "kazatski" - the two elderly emigres would kick out their still shapely legs and circle the dinette...What they didn't discuss except once was the violence which drove them from Russia in 1905, or that they were Russian Jews and victimized by Cossacks during pogroms and political confrontations. The sweet, gentle father "Nicky" I know today was "Bloody Nikolai" to them...For all this, they yearned for Russia- "Roo-see-a " they pronounced the motherland and they spoke of troikas, the snow...the dacha and I was "infected" or injected with my Russophilia which soon segued into the Romanov obsession...
How they longed to return but never did. I took the journey for them, with them, in a sense and have been in Russia six times - pursuing a deep, unspoken dream
