Tales of the past I

Only half of my blanket is quilted. Which is terribly slow. But my idea of cutting it into 4 smaller pieces for quilting really worked – it is so much easier to quilt just ¼ of a full blanket, so I’m quite happy butt still nothing to share.  So... while blanket is is on its way, I will share one of my treasures – one of my TV soap style true family stories. Sometimes I wonder what exactly makes us US, the people who we are. Genes? Location? Upbringing? How much of it’s our own will and how much is destiny? :D
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The story starts in 1860, when a teenage boy from quite noble family lost both his parents due to pneumonia. He was raised up by two elderly aunts – both spinsters. Of course, he was rotten spoiled, but young lads still needs to get education, so he was sent to study agriculture and manor management to Germany (if facts are precise, Heidelberg University) along with his milk brother as a butler. 
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To be honest, young nobleman was not into studying; he preferred beer and all the fun of the student life so he soon got the genius idea – to keep aunts happy, he sent to university his milk brother while he was enjoying life away from his old aunts. 
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Milk brother did the good job and graduated with good marks under the name of the young nobleman. So when they returned home, young nobleman had the Diploma to show the aunts, and his milk brother – all the knowledge to run the manor.  And so it went. Young nobleman continued to enjoy life while his milk brother took the position of the estate manager and everybody was happy. 
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Then the accident happened – young nobleman fall in love.  He put his eyes not on the young noble lady, but... on one of the maids in the manor. To cut the story, she became pregnant. The marriage was out of the question, of course – he was not so brave. But the young nobleman was not a bad boy, he wanted to sort out the situation in the best possible way.  So he offered a farm to his milk brother if he will marry the maid and adopt the child. 
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The deal was done and the child – a girl was born 1898. All was great until the WWI started. Not so young noble gentleman and his milk brother went to army while maid and her daughter were evacuated deep into Russia – Samara. Mother found a job, daughter went to school.
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Then few years later the typhoid epidemic started and the city, overcrowded with evacuees was in the mess. The city services did not messed around – it was a wartime – everybody who collapsed on the streets were delivered to the hospital, and if no signs of life – into morgue. 
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The maid had epilepsy and when she one evening after her shift in factory collapsed on the streets, she also was collected. Sadly – she was taken right to the morgue. Her daughter searched for mother, and next morning, when morgue doors were opened to collect the corpses for burial, her mother was found dead at the door – with bleeding fingers when she in panic tried to scratch her way through the morgue door. 

So the young schoolgirl now was alone in Samara.  To find the job was easy, but cope with loneliness – not so. Then she met a young Russian army officer who was speaking her language and fell in love. 
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Quick sidestep about the young officer – he was the 6^th son of a farmer, and as such, needed to get away from home. He had some artistic talents so he became a decorator and later found himself into army engineer school – big way for a farmer’s son. His brother followed him into Russian army as well. In 1906, being a young handsome officer, he fell in love with a noble lady and they engaged.  
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After few months later the windy lady met somebody else, and young officer was informed by post that all is over. He took it seriously, very seriously. He was so upset that decided to join the communist party in 1907 – all the nobles are crap. :D  So since then he was Russian army officer, engineer, and a member of communist party.  
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Back to our story. 

So the young lady met this officer and they got married. The war was nearly over, the revolution took it’s turn so now they were both in Soviet Russia, both non Russians, and her husband, being an early communist and an army engineer, high in position. 
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Husband was sent all over the country to build bridges and blow up buildings, and young lady followed. Their first child was born in 1922, then the girl in 1924, and then another boy in 1926.
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 Soviet Russia that time was quite a wild place; groups of looters under different political shields were still rooming around. One of such groups attacked the train where young lady with her children were travelling. Being quite wealthy she had several fur coats (it’s a necessity in Russian winter, to be honest). Trains were crap, no heating, so the youngest child, just 9 month old, was sleeping neatly wrapped in the fur coat. 
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When looters went through the train in hurry, they spotted the fur coat, not the baby in it, and grabbed it despite mother’s screams. The army was called in, the chase started just few hours later, and looters were caught with the fur coat. The baby was found only next morning near the embankment where the looters had thrown him out. He was buried there in hurry as the train needed to continue its way and today nobody knows where exactly is that baby’s grave. 
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So lady now had 2 children. Her husband was successfully climbing up the soviet career ladder, when she received a letter from home. Her real father along with his milk brother both had died during the WWI and now she has become the official heir and owner of the whole estate.  To claim her rights, she must return home. 
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The times were hard. Chances that Soviets will let them leave the country were really slim and the information that his wife is an owner of an estate, a noblewoman actually, would not only ruin his career, but most likely would cost them lives. So decision was made – keep mouth shut and carry on – forget about past, estates and the homeland. So they did. 
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The army engineer became one of the head architects of St. Petersburg. His brother was still in Soviet army where he was accused for political disloyalty and shoot 1937. Soviets did expanded and the homeland of the couple became a part of the Soviet Union in 1940. The door was open and they started to think about possibilities to return back. Until then, their oldest son who just graduated, decided to go first and see the homeland of both his parents. 
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So he went. It was a shock for him. Big shock. So the young lad, raised in Soviet Russia, went to church. And then, when German army attacked the Soviets, he joined German army – not because he liked Germans, or Nazi – he just wanted to fight against Soviets. His destiny was hard. He was captured by Soviets and as a POW sent to gold mines in Yakutia where he died in 1953. 
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The lady and her family were still in St. Petersburg, when the war started. German army moved fast and reached St. Petersburg in 8^th September, 1941. (If you are interested, search Wikipedia for Siege of Leningrad for more detailed info).  
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Her husband had a chance to evacuate his family out of the city when the situation worsened, but they decided that it would not be fair to these who can’t leave.  So they stayed.  She and her youngest daughter  were taking bricks apart from bombed houses, worked in hospitals and did all other jobs what people were doing in that city during the blockade. And they all survived. (Sories about surviving Blockade are worth a book, not just a single post here :D). 
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When the war was over, the lady’s husband was sent to their homeland as one of the ministers of the new, Soviet government there. But they were already living in fear – their oldest son had been in German army, now was in Gulag and if officials would found it out... 

They returned. Her husband was in government for several years until Soviet bureaucracy sorted out itself, 2 was added to 2, and he lost his position.  He worked as an architect, his wife - as accountant and they both raised their daughter back in the homeland. 
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The lady lived a long life to tell me the story of her life. As a grand grandmother she was also the first story teller to my children. She survived the stomach cancer surgery and broken hip and died at age of 89. Her daughter is still alive and going on. 
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So, this is the one of the stories from my family collection. Reads like a crappy TV soap script, isn’t it? :D Now it’s time to go back to quilting... Tempus fugit!