Grant Hayter-Menzies's Blog

• A Christmas to remember

  December 23, 2009

  • We were living away from home by then, but that particular Christmas my brother and I decided to spend the holiday with our parents, for two cogent reasons: our maternal grandmother was to be there, serving as she always did as balm to the familial irritation we knew would spread faster than diaper rash; and our parents had finally bought a house in the country.   It sat on a hill above a valley ...
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• Revolutionary survivor

  November 11, 2009

  • I sat at the tea table of a woman born to an ancient princely family, in 1905, the year of the first Russian revolution, a woman who was still a child when, in 1917, another revolution smashed her young life to pieces. Mrs. D. served me tea in thin flowered cups and slices of cherry-filled pastry on thin flowered plates.  I noticed a monogram in Cyrillic on a silver spoon—the first letter of ...
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• Books and flowers

  August 31, 2009

  • It’s funny and wonderful how a fragile flower can summon up a flesh and blood person, just as palpably as if they, like the bloom, were capable of materializing in vivid color out of an unremarkable brown seed. I look at the cheery pinks, purples, whites and yellows of portulaca and my maternal grandmother is there with me—she grew them and they were the first flower she showed me how to ...
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