The Story Starts Here

Spy Story #1: Marjorie Tilley, a woman ahead of her time

In my grandmother’s final hours, I sat by her bedside and held her hand. At 17, I was young to be managing the care of a dying woman, but circumstances had made it so. Work obligations had called my mother out of state and my grandmother’s rapid and unanticipated decline left me “in charge.” But in many ways, it was a gift to everyone. My grandmother and I had always been close, more similar in nature to each other than to my mother, and as I saw her end draw nearer day by day, I was grateful for the chance to rise to the occasion. 

My grandmother’s life was a tapestry of unexpected adventures – unlikely sojourns overseas and extended periods of community leadership at home. She sprinkled stories of her life over the hours we spent together from which I began to glean a multidimensional understanding of the woman she had been. I was 10 when I learned my grandmother had gone to prison for espionage. Only years later did I come to understand how, and why.  When she died at 92, I understood that this story and others were now my responsibility. 

The author and her grandmother playing checkers together in 1991

My grandmother is my point of origin and as such, my story is woven into hers. Her stories are my responsibility. The ovum that became me grew within the baby she carried more than seven decades ago. Her life has given me a mirror in which to reflect and more clearly see my own. 

Born in 1911, Marjorie Tilley survived two World Wars and the Great Depression, married and birthed four children all before the age of 35.

“Sometimes you just need to pull up your socks and get on with it,” my grandmother liked to say, her call to action for just doing the thing that needed to be done. She was always just doing it, despite headwinds and circumstances, a Nike commercial before it was cool.

In her early adulthood, she was the first in her family to go to college, enrolling in the optimistic opulence of the roaring ’20s and graduating into the turbulence and uncertainty of the beginning of the Great Depression. Without better options, she chose to become a Soviet spy. 

The incredible story that flows from that decision is the basis for the beginning of this newsletter. The stories told here are based on my grandmother’s documented testimony, perhaps embellished slightly at times with my own imagination (with disclosure, of course). 

I’ve been thinking about writing my grandmother’s life story for a long time but have spent what feels like eons talking myself out of it. My family history, while intriguing, is also peppered with horrifying realities. The thought of extricating the skeletons from the closet and airing the dirty laundry has left me queasy enough to avoid the task altogether. 

But try as I might to run away from it, this is the story I have been given to tell. In my grandmother’s story, I find solace in my own life, and hope that more fully appreciating who and where I have come from will help me clarify where I am going. 

While our world rewards those who appear to know exactly what they’re doing, sometimes we’re just figuring out how to survive this moment for the next. Sometimes we have to just pull up our socks and do the thing. The story that unfolds from the most unlikely decision is often the one we remember best.

Start reading Fetch Me Home, here: