I’m a born storyteller, easily enchanted with ordinary things, often seeing people as they really are, not as they appear to be. I’m used to endowing all life with magic and wonder and mystery.

I think in pictures. I can’t help it. That’s the way I am.

Nijni-Novgorod 1896

I was born in a Pullman car. My mother, having come to the Great Fair at Nijni-Novgorod, miscalculated and I was born on the train. Worried about my catching a disease, she had me baptised on the same day, which was the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption.

Being born means having a family. From all the stories told me, I had a wonderful family dating back to the 11th century.

My ancestors were farmers in the district of Tambov, south of Moscow. Their name was Kolyschkine. The word “kol” means “boundary peg.” Maybe some of my ancestors were surveyors.

Later, my great-grandfather received titles of nobility from the tsar. As far as I was concerned, this didn’t matter very much. I was delighted to be a descendant of farmers.

At my birth, my mother said to me, “You are born under the shadow of the cross.” She repeated those words to me when I was old enough to understand.

The meaning of these words grows deeper by the day. They were obviously prophetic. Still, it is a blessing to be born under the shadow of the cross.

My First Memory

Well, this is my first memory of realizing that I was—that I was someone. I did not know exactly what or who, but I knew that I was.

The large park in the town of Ekaterinoslav was very beautiful. I saw a big, beautiful leaf that had fallen from a maple tree which stood nearby. That leaf sailed majestically and incomprehensibly round and round the pond.

It was the leaf that fascinated me. I wanted to capture it, hold it and keep it. I put out my hand half-way extended toward the water.

For, more marvellous than the leaf, was the strange thing that was my hand. It led me to discover myself. I bent over the waters and saw my face and was astonished at the sight. Looking down, I beheld my whole self, and laughed aloud for the joy of the discovery. I was four then.

Going to the Top

From Odessa we took a ship to Istanbul. I got to know the captain of the boat.

When nobody was looking, I just walked up the many stairs that led to his house (that’s the fastest way to get to know a captain!). I could spell, but it took me a little while to read “Captain.”

I knocked at the door very politely and a man called, “Come in.” I said, “Hello, how do you do? God bless you.”

He said, “God bless you, too. How do you do? Are you one of my passengers?” I said, “I don’t know what “passengers” means. I came to find out what “captain” means. You are so high up, like in a nest. You are like a hen looking after all of us at night and during the day.”

He was chunky, a very nice man, and we became great friends. We exchanged names. “Excuse me for barging in, but I might come again because you have such a beautiful view of the water. I want to see where the water goes. Good-bye,” I said.

My father and mother were horrified. They said, “You don’t just barge into the captain’s cabin like that!” “I didn’t barge in,” I said, “I knocked.”

After that we sat at the captain’s table and became very friendly with him. I had a wonderful appetite and ate everything placed before me. Ordinarily that would have made me fat, but I lost it all running around the ship. There wasn’t a place on the ship I didn’t explore.

We reached Istanbul where my father had some business, and we stayed for about a year.

In His Footsteps

Every Easter, whenever possible, my father, mother and I, and later my brother Serge, used to go to Jerusalem for the Holy Week ceremonies.

One day my parents took me to the Rock of the Ascension, the place near Jerusalem from which Christ rose into heaven. I loved to look at that rock, because it showed the imprints of a person who was standing on his toes on one foot, while the other was flat.

I had one ambition: to put my feet into these imprints of the feet of Christ. But that was a bit difficult, because they had this area cordoned off. But what’s a rope to a little girl?

One day I just slid underneath while everybody was praying and put my little feet into those imprints, one up and the other down.

People began screaming, “Look what she’s doing! Look what she’s doing! Get that child out of there! Blasphemy, blasphemy!” A Russian priest came out and said, “Let the little children come to me,’ have you forgotten that?” He helped me put my feet in the imprints of the feet of Jesus Christ, and then he escorted me out of there!

For the story behind this collection of memories and its illustrations, read the following article, “A Dream.”

From Restoration, Feb. 1965, They Called Her the Baroness, (Alba House, 1995) pp. 12-13, “How the Little Mandate Came to Be,” (unpublished manuscript), and Fragments of My Life, pp. 7, 9, 11-12, 21 (1996).