Turmoil lies ahead…

The oldest brother is Louis. He was tough and bright. He helped my mother and Harry go to university.

My mother’s parents with their cousin Mary who was placed in a mental institution after an unfortunate love affair. She was allowed to leave at intervals to stay with my grandparents.

Uncle Leon was an Adirondack Mountain guide. He would take visitors into the woods, make meals over campfires and tell them stories and about the biota in the forests.

My Uncle Leon is on the left, Uncle Louis on right. In my Uncle Leon’s day transition from boyhood to adolescence was marked by exchanging short pants for knickers. It was only after I came to Australia that I heard the word, knickers, used to designate a feminine undergarment. Transition from adolescent to manhood was marked by exchanging knickers for long pants.

… with one of his girlfriends.

I plan to write a short essay about my father’s experiences in the Russian army.

I don’t know the others.

The picture was probably taken by my Uncle Harry, an artist in painting, sketching, silkscreen, metal and woodwork. The isolation of the women evokes the last line of Ozymandias/The lone and level sands stretch far away.

My grandfather had aristocratic features, penetrating grey eyes and a fondness for multilingual puns. He was a warm, loving, witty man. My grandmother died in 1936. When she died grandfather changed. I never saw him laugh again. Grandfather lived seven more years, but he was no longer a witty, gregarious, joyous person but a sorrowing old man. The love of his life was dead.

Mother and son.