In the corner of the living room floor, next to the cat dish and a dusty book shelf, lay a box of my grandmother’s film slides.

My grandmother spent her career translating between Russian and French for the Soviet Union. During the height of Soviet repression, she was one of the few individuals granted a passport and who travelled outside the Iron Curtain.This assortment of photographs represents many versions of my grandmother’s past. There are the work conferences in Brussels, Belgium, where neck scarves are carefully coordinated with skirt suits. And, a more familiar, relaxed mother of two, blissfully enjoying the sprawling green pastures of an Estonian summer. Her life, though segmented by her immigration to the United States after the collapse of the USSR, is still very much a combination of these two women. Now, at 96, as I help clip her favorite brooch for a family dinner, I think I know which one she embodies.