Even though, just like you, I haven’t become a professional mountaineer or photographer, these are my all-time favorite hobbies, even passions, and they are rooted in you, Dad. Love you!

You’re the only family member I’ve ever felt truly connected to. We met in the summer after my first year of school. You were about 14 at the time. What was remarkable about you is that you were a teenager who genuinely enjoyed spending time with your family: parents, grandparents, younger brothers, pets, as well as cousins.

When we arrived at your place, I vividly remember being showered with immense hospitality and warmth, something that I had never experienced before…

The entire time we spent with you, I felt cozy and snug. It was a new and very pleasant sensation for me. You would braid my hair and read bedtime stories to me in the attic of your countryside house. When I woke up in the morning, playful sun rays would greet me, and I would immediately rush downstairs to see you. I still have a couple of photos where I’m not looking at the camera but rather at you, with utmost admiration. They never fail to make me smile and be grateful to have you as my only female cousin.

We savored juicy watermelons and delicious river fish full of the tiniest bones, played happily with your dog, swam in huge pools of warm muddy water left on the riverbed after the Lena, this magnificent Siberian river, had partially dried up during the July drought, and then screamed at the top of our lungs as the adults attempted to rinse the mud off us with the icy cold river water.

Those three weeks were by far the brightest and most wonderful time I had ever spent with my family, albeit my extended one. As we were about to leave, I realized for the first time ever that I really wanted your mom to adopt me so that I could stay with you a little longer. I cried my eyes out at the airport before our flight, holding onto you tightly as if hoping it would change anything.

The kindness and warmth you radiated set the bar very high for the type of people I wanted to have more in my life. But I’m glad you did because thanks to you I learned that such people actually exist, that I might meet them and experience more beautiful human connections.

You were my mom’s younger brother whom she adored. She never said that explicitly but I could see it in the smile that appeared in her eyes when she was talking about you. And I could definitely see where this admiration came from. Mom had moved out of your parents’ place when you were still in elementary school, so she was happy to see the man you had grown up to be.

You were a loving husband, an awesome dad to your two boys, and a very hardworking, energetic man with entrepreneurial spirit during the times when everyone tried to be mostly discreet. But above all, I remember you as someone with an easy-going, light-hearted, and simply larger-than-life personality.

You took us swimming and gave us a ride in a canoe, let us run in your garden, hide behind berry bushes, play in a small garden pool, climb trees, and eat wild berries from their branches. You always had a joke up your sleeve and a broad smile on your face, even when your eyes showed how tired you were.

Mom said you were in a rush all the time: in a rush to live, to work, to spend time with your loved ones, to enjoy as much of this life, of its big and little moments as possible – as if you knew you didn’t have much of it ahead of you.

You were gone way too early for such an amazing man, but I will never forget how much you loved your family and how much you loved life.

When I first entered your classroom at the tender age of 10, my classmates and I were welcomed by the most radiant person I had seen at school so far. That alone seemed like a promising start to tackling this new unknown “monster” in my schedule called French.

Surprisingly enough, after I’d been placed into the French one third of my class, my parents didn’t object to the school’s decision. They must have believed it was way better than studying German, while also planning for me to learn English, which was becoming more and more popular, as an extracurricular class. For me, it was all the same at first as I didn’t understand the importance of one foreign language over another. However, it soon became clear, even to my young self, that I’d ended up in the right group: ours was much smaller than the English one, so we received a lot of individual attention, and we actually had consistency in this class while English teachers came and went, often leaving their students rather confused about what they were trying to learn.

I often looked forward to your lessons. You were always gentle and had the kindest and most charming of smiles. I didn’t consciously realize it, but I could definitely feel that you had a deep love for your subject, you were immersed in the French spirit and, most importantly, eager to share it all with us. And it WAS contagious. Although memorizing those endless verb endings and noun genders was sometimes very difficult, I was inspired to go on by the immense happiness I saw in your big brown eyes.

One of the most fun things you did was match our Russian names to their French equivalents. I became Claire, of course. This was the first time in my life that I had been called a version of my name that sounded unusual, allowing me to show a slightly different side of myself. The biggest challenge for me was the French R sound. I just couldn’t – or didn’t want to? – get it right for several months. However, you were always very patient with me and never pushed or pressured me. And so then, one day, it finally happened. Not only did I learn to pronounce the R correctly, but I also felt like something else changed inside me; I guess, in that moment, I shifted from learning the language analytically to acquiring it with all my being: feeling and sensing it rather than thinking. That’s why, even to this day, I consider sound and speech imitation to be crucial steps toward mastering any language.

Many years later I accidentally bumped into you in our old neighborhood and to my surprise, you looked as young and dazzling as you did in our first lesson. Eventually, you shared with me that you had indeed been fresh out of university when you started working at my school; and fresh out of a couple of trips to France, which definitely contributed to you embodying its spirit. It turns out, even at such a young age, my intuition was right.

This intense appreciation of France and everything French, which I gained from you, stayed with me even after we got a new French teacher and then into my university years when it was my turn to visit this beautiful country. All the impressions I got during my travels there seemed to find perfect resonance within me. It felt as though I was not only predetermined to love France with all my heart but also destined to be loved back. The time I spent in France was safe, filled with adventure, and absolutely unforgettable.

You paved the way for my love of languages and cultures and helped me take my first careful steps on this path. Exploring these two foreign languages (French and English), delving into their depths and peculiarities, as well as discovering my own potential for understanding and appreciating them, have always brought me immense joy and comfort. I will be forever grateful to you for doing that, but mostly for doing it with the charm and kindness of an authentically French woman you have always been in my mind.

Being friends with you for over 20 years (can you believe this?!) sometimes makes me feel like we’ve actually known each other for much MUCH longer… Besides, every time we meet up (I wish we would meet more often), time behaves strangely: it pretends not to have existed for the past few months – or years – making us believe we only saw each other a couple of days ago. Or even better: catching up with you brings out my teenage self who can laugh unabashedly and be as lively and carefree as I used to be, and that is invaluable. It’s also solid evidence that despite attending different high schools, then different universities, getting married, divorced, living in different cities, sometimes even countries, and having children, we haven’t changed that much since we first met as 13-year-old girls.