Have
you ever wondered if or how a person’s name affects his/her personality? Does
your name determine your fate? Or was Shakespeare right to shrug off labels?
The older I get, the more I am convinced that the Bard was wrong—that there is
something in a name, after all.
My great-grandmother was named Tatyana. There are several different meanings of that name. From ancient Greek, it translates as "founder of order" or "organizer." According to other translations, it means “a fairy queen,” or “fairy
princess.” She was both. Born to a noble Russian family, she was raised like a
princess. Later in life, by fate’s capricious will, she became head of the
household, where she reigned supreme, bringing order and organizing the lives
of her family.
Let’s
start from the beginning: Tatyana Fortushina was born in 1901 in Qusar
(Kusary), located in the foothills of the Great Caucasus Mountains in
Azerbaijan. One of her brothers was an orthodox priest. The other was in the army.
She also had two sisters.
Unfortunately,
the details about my great-grandmother’s family are sketchy at best. According
to all the people I have talked to, Tatyana (or Baba Tanya, as everybody called
her) wasn’t close with her parents or siblings. My guess? Probably because of
her highly unusual marriage. As I said, my great-grandmother was raised and
educated like a princess, graduating from an establishment (St. Nina’s) for
girls of prominent Christian families, and was the apple of her parents’ eye…. until
she met my great-grandfather, that is.
Here,
we draw a big, fat blank. To this day, no one in the family knows how or why Meshady
Abbas, the son of an Iranian manufacturer, ended up in post-revolutionary
Azerbaijan.
When
did my great-grandparents meet? And how on earth did a Muslim merchant get parental
permission from one of the prominent members of Christian society to marry his
daughter? The details are shrouded in secret. One thing we know for sure,
though, is that in order to marry my great-grandmother, my great-grandfather
converted to Christianity. And so, Meshadi Abbas became Artemy Kurdov and
married my great-grandmother. Vera, my grandmother, was born the next year.
Their
small family was happy—at least I want to believe that they were—but not for
very long. When my grandmother Vera was a toddler, Artemy Kurdov, who embraced
the Communist ideology wholeheartedly, was executed as an enemy of the nation. Ironic?
Not in the least. It’s hard to understand now, but, during Stalin’s regime,
just sneezing the wrong way was enough to be labeled as an enemy of the
state—literally. And my daredevil of a great-grandfather
had managed to become something of a Major in the small city where he lived. I assume that’s why he was ultimately
executed… or perhaps he just said something, or did something, or looked at
someone in passing, and some zealot took a notice and reported it. I don’t want
to think about my great-grandfather’s days in prison or the beatings he
endured. Torture was a regular practice of the NKVD—the original name of the
KGB.
Thus,
my great-grandmother Tatyana was left a young widow with no income to support
her and her daughter, and no family to turn to for help. But instead of falling
apart, this delicately built dark-haired princess squared her shoulders and
spat fate in the eyes. She showed everybody what a graduate of St. Nina’s was
made of! Remembering the sewing lessons she took in school, Baba Tanya soon
became one of the most sought-after seamstresses—all the wives of the city’s
elite were dressed by her. Much later, her granddaughters, my mom and my aunt,
paraded in the clothes that were the subject of envy to their friends. She had finally found her footing, and life
in her household became content. They had a roof over their heads, food on the
table, but, most importantly, they had each other.
And
then…
Her
only daughter, her whole world, the reason of her being, fell in love with a
man almost twice her age… and had to get married, or else. I can only wonder
what Baba Tanya felt, when her nice and quiet world suddenly fell apart, as her
own daughter repeated the same fate she had? As a mother, how would I react if
I were in her shoes? Would I let my daughter chose her own fate, or would I try
to interfere? I honestly don’t know.
In
the end, my great-grandmother gave the couple her blessings and stepped aside. For
the next five years, she lived alone. Was she hurt? I imagine she was. Feeling
lonely? Abandoned? Oh, absolutely. But she was too proud to show her emotions.
Always restrained, now she became coolly aloof.
Years
later, when her beloved daughter became a widow with two small children at the
age of twenty, she immediately took all of them under her wing. How could a
woman, a mother, and grandmother keep harboring grudges when three people she
loved more than life itself needed her? Hence, she became the head of an
all-female household, one she ruled for almost three decades. The second
meaning of her name – the founder of order—had come into play.
According
to my family, she was a stern woman, fair and loving, but reserved. She didn’t
suffer fools, didn’t forgive easily, and meted out punishment with a precision
of a surgeon. Her scalpel was her tongue—sharp, cold, and merciless. But her
love for her girls, although never visible, ran deep and was true.
My
grandmother Vera always said that, if not for Baba Tanya and her sacrifices, they
probably wouldn’t have survived the hunger of World War II. During that
horrible time, to suppress her own hunger, Baba Tanya started to smoke. She went
hungry for days, giving her tiny bread portions to her granddaughters. She learned
to cook from bran and waste products, conjuring meals out of things
unimaginable. She stood hours on end in bread lines, barely alive from hunger, all
the while puffing away her disgusting handmade cigarettes. That cheap tobacco
mix affected her lungs, ultimately causing her to pass away years later when I
was barely three years old.
My
memory of her is vague: a frail figure in a starched white kerchief, thin and
pale-faced, coughing loudly. I remember I was afraid to enter the room when the
‘scary old woman’ was lying in bed. I suppose, for a small child, her frailty,
her illness-ravished face, that horrible dry cough could and did look scary.
But
still…to this day, I feel ashamed of myself.
Interestingly
enough, while I don’t remember much of my great-grandmother’s face, one thing
that stuck with me is her hands, which I can remember clearly.
Isn’t
that just strange?
Or
is it just the wonders of human memory?
Here is a peek at
Stella’s time travel romance novel for your reading pleasure.
One key unlocks the love of a lifetime…but could also
break her heart.
Nika Morris’s sixth sense has helped build a successful
business, lovingly restoring and reselling historic homes on Florida’s Amelia
Island. But there’s one forlorn, neglected relic that’s pulled at her from the
moment she saw it. The century-old Coleman house.
Quite unexpectedly, the house is handed to her on a
silver platter—along with a mysterious letter, postmarked 1909, yet addressed
personally to Nika. Its cryptic message: Find the key. You know where it is.
Hurry, for goodness sake!
The message triggers an irresistible drive to find
that key. When she does, one twist in an old grandfather clock throws her
back in time, straight into the arms of deliciously, devilishly handsome Elijah
Coleman.
Swept up in a journey of a lifetime, Nika finds herself
falling in love with Eli—and with the family and friends that inhabit a time not
even her vivid imagination could have conjured. But in one desperate moment of
homesickness, she makes a decision that will not only alter the course of more
than one life, but break her heart.
’Til Time Do Us
Part
is available in Kindle and Paperback at AMAZON.
Talented author
Stella May is the penname for
Marina Sardarova who has a fascinating history you should read on her
website.
Stella writes fantasy romance as well as time travel romance. She is the author of 'Till Time Do Us Part, Book 1 in her Upon a Time series, and the stand-alone book Rhapsody in Dreams. Love and family are two cornerstones of her stories and life. Stella’s books are available in e-book and paperback through all major vendors.
When not writing, Stella enjoys classical music, reading, and long walks along the ocean. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband Leo of 35 years and their son George. They are her two best friends and are all partners in their family business.
