Memoirs of My Life: “Tatiana” It is always so surprising to me that my little children and grandchildren never grow tired of hearing the stories of my life. I am nothing special – just an old, worn, and tired Russian woman. My children and grandchildren gather ‘round me as often as possible to hear the recollections of my childhood, special memories I hold dear from my life, and to somewhat experience the vastly circumstances I faced growing up a young woman in late 19th century Russia, as compared to what they all encounter today. Tonight, their insistent pleading takes me back to stories of children: that is, my own self when I was a child and my childhood, the relationship I had with my family when I was young, and finally, how I handled starting my own family. I indulge their whims every time, it seems, because by retelling the stories, the memories become ever more etched into my memory. “Come gather around everyone,” I call to my young grandsons and daughters. “What stories would you like for me to recall tonight?” I ask to their delight. “Tell us about your childhood. We want to know what you were like when you were a girl,” little Ivan pronounced. For me, childhood has been so long ago. It almost seems like those memories are so far away from my state today, that they are foreign to me now; however, there are some aspects of my childhood that I remember quite vividly. I began to reminisce right along with my starry-eyed grandchildren, yet nowhere near as romantically as they did, for I knew the realities of life for children was far from what they were expecting. “When thinking back on my life, the earliest memories I have are from around age five or six. While the young boys began working like a full-grown man at a young age, the other girls and I began learning to be wives and mothers. I vividly remember my mother telling all of us that we were