The unfortunate news has reached us, that one of our grandmothers, Chrysanthi, has recently passed away. She liked the idea of this project and supported it. Our thoughts are with her, and our friend, Alkistis.

Chrysanthi Chalkidou (1926)

My grandmother Chrysanthi is 87 years old, though she insists on 82. She used to be a very pretty elegant woman, sewing and wearing nice clothes and always taking care of herself. Even now, she rolls her hair every Sunday to go to church.

I think we are very different with my grandmother and we disagree on some things but there is something we do together every summer and still enjoy it: this special sour cherry liqueur. We start early in the morning at the open market, picking the best sour cherries from the same guy every year. We wash the cherries and take the stones out. Then we put the cherries in a jar, filling half of it, and add 2 cups of sugar. This has to stay in the sun for 1 month until the sugar melts into sirup. Then we fill the rest of the jar with cognac, adding cinnamon and clove and bring it back to the sun for another 2 week. We strain the dring, taste it together and store in nice bottles. When someone visits my grandmother, she likes to offer this liquer and proudly add: “My granddaughter made it this year!“

Alkistis Thomidou

Sussanna Kryazheva (1924)

I am extremely proud of this grandmother. If my mother’s mum had created the magic world of my childhood, baba Sana has given me the magics of the Memory and of the Family History – my inner support in life.

In my child years, she seemed strict and serious to me, but when I have grown, I suddenly saw her as an unthinkably strong and beautiful person with a very vivid attitude, with a very sharp mind and of a great erudition. I am amazed, how freely she can orient herself in what is going on – in Russia, in the world, in what is happening on the whole planet. And what is most important, she is able to connect it all to her own historical dimension.

She was born and grown up in Leningrad, then, before the blockade, she had to evacuate to Siberia, where she studied medicine, then she followed her husband-diplomat to China, where she taught Russian to Chinese kids, and then, after few years, she was back to Siberia, refusing to live in Moscow. So she experienced much more, comparing to an average Soviet person. She used to tell with a smile, that she saw both Stalin (at the Red square in Moscow) and Mao Zedong (at Tiananmen square in Beijing), or that once she was received in Kremlin for some celebration dinner, or when once she was at the Black sea, the famous Soviet opera tenor Ivan Kozlovsky had a room above them, and every time seeing her he would give compliments. Having seen all that and being aware of her own family roots, she became the person I know now.

My true meeting with her started when I first opened her photo albums and she began to tell: about her youth and friends (so bright and lively, as it was yesterday), about the fates of her parents, about the difficulties of those times, about far relatives, about life of her grand-grand-parents. Each story had so many rich details, that it wasn’t hard to dive in those times and feel like I know all these people and places personally. When I listened to her and when I still do, I can not have enough of her power of life and of her love for life, when you are facing your path with your eyes open, and you do not forget anything, you do not paint out some sad or dark pages – no, you take everything with you and attach it in to the life album, colorful, deep in senses, complete in the vision of the world.

Almost all her stories Baba Sana ends with a saying: “Everything has had its place: both good, and bad”. In my youth I was confused to hear it, but now I see it as my ‘safety bag’ – life turns different sides to us, but how we take it or what people we become after that, depends only on ourself.