My sister lives in Canada now. An ocean and thousands of miles separate us, but can distance weaken a bond built over decades?
Making a life on another continent tests your character and the inner strength you grew up with, listening to the stories of your elders.
Ulyana is more than a name on our family tree. She carries our family name beyond familiar borders. Looking at her life, I feel the invisible bond that connects us wherever we are. Kinship does not require being in the same room: it lives in shared values, memories of home and the pride with which we say our family name.
Ulyana, my sister, and I posing in front of a pair of bird’s wings at the Burj Khalifa.
Distance fades when you share common ground. To me, Ulyana will always be the close companion with whom I began finding my way through this big, complicated world.
What we share took shape in a cramped one-room apartment on 50th Anniversary of October Avenue in Ulan-Ude, and in the creative bustle of our father’s studio. Yuri Nevsky is a science-fiction writer and artist.
Ulyana and I grew up to the rhythm of our family’s advertising agency, RekA: the sound of its first plotters and the atmosphere of the art salon on Lenin Street run by our father.
As we breathed in the smell of fresh paint and watched ideas take shape, we absorbed a family habit: shaping a life and seeing structure where others see empty space.
An ocean separates us today, but our father’s lessons and passion for creating remain with us. They taught us something lasting: the world belongs to those who know how to create it.
@nevsky_alexander
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